Jesus Tradition Archives

All Gospels Are Not Created Equal: My Wall Street Journal Review of “The Apocryphal Gospels”

June 7, 2022

Most people have never read one of the “apocryphal” Gospels—that is, a gospel that was not included in our Bibles. For that matter, most people have never read one of the canonical Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Perhaps they’ve read snippets here and there, but very few have read them straight through.

Even so, there seems to be no shortage of opinions about the nature of ancient Gospels and how they functioned in the early church. Dramatic claims—typically filtered through blog articles and internet lore—are the order of the day. There were hundreds of “other” Gospels in the early church, we are told. No one knew which Gospels they should read. Eventually, the Gospels were picked by Constantine at the Council of Nicea. Other Gospels were suppressed. And on it goes.

Aside from the particulars, these discussions always seem to end up in the same place. Even though we are told we can’t be sure of much, we are told we can be sure of one thing: no Gospel is better than any other Gospel. They are all pretty much the same. The fact that some ended up in our Bibles and not others, is just the randomness of history.

Such a narrative will play well in our popular culture that is enamored with the idea that no one view (or one book, or one set of books) can be right. And if no one book can be right, then they must all be right (or all be wrong).

The problem with such a narrative, however, is that it bumps up against the real world. It bumps up against history. When we actually read these apocryphal Gospels, and compare them carefully to the canonical Gospels, one thing becomes unavoidably clear: All Gospels are not created equal. They are decidedly not the same. [Read more…]

Jesus in the Canonical and Apocryphal Gospels: Simon Gathercole to Give Harold O.J. Brown Lectures at @RTSCharlotte

March 14, 2022

For our annual Harold O.J. Brown Lectures at RTS Charlotte, we are pleased to Welcome Dr. Simon Gathercole, professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Cambridge University.

On March 22, 11AM-2PM, Dr. Gathercole will be giving two lectures (with a provided lunch in between) on the theme of “Jesus in Canonical and Apocryphal Gospels.”

Certainly this lecture will be of great interest to all who want to understand what makes our gospels unique as opposed to the variety of apocryphal gospels in existence. I am particularly interested in this topic myself as I did my Ph.D. research on an apocryphal gospel fragment, P.Oxy. 840 (see my book, The Gospel of the Savior).

Dr. Gathercole’s first degree was in Classics and Theology in Cambridge, after which he pursued doctoral research under the supervision of James D.G. Dunn in Durham. He also studied for short periods at the University of Tübingen and the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. He previously taught in the University of Aberdeen (2000-2007). He was editor of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament for a number of years and is now a co-editor of the journal Early Christianity.

His main academic interest is the interpretation of the New Testament. Having begun as a classicist and also worked in the field of early Judaism, he is particularly fascinated by the connections between the New Testament and the literature contemporaneous with it. His principal theological interests are christology, and the doctrine of the atonement.

Dr. Gathercole has published numerous book, most recently The Apocryphal Gospels (Penguin Classics, 2022).

Dr. Harold O.J. Brown, after whom the lectures are named, served as John R. Richardson Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the Charlotte campus from 1998 to 2007. Dr. Brown was a leading evangelical voice in the pro-life movement immediately after Roe v. Wade, co-founding the Christian Action Council (now Care Net) with former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in the 70s. Dr. Brown was a widely respected evangelical scholar during his professional life, writing books, essays and articles in the areas of culture, science, theology and politics.

Past lecturers include Carl Trueman, Rosaria Butterfield, Michael Horton, Russell Moore, Oliver Crisp, Mark Dever, Derek Thomas, Al Mohler, Mark Noll, and George Marsden. In 2020, RTS Charlotte hosted Phil Ryken for our lectures.

If you are interested in joining us for this special event, please register here. Hope to see you there!

Where Are All the Heretical Bishops in the Second Century?

December 13, 2021

I’ve noticed that Michael Bird has recently posted an article on heresy and orthodoxy in early Christianity. From what I can tell (I can’t see the entire article because it’s behind the paywall), he is pushing back against the popular narrative, originally suggested by Walter Bauer in his 1934 book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, which insists that Christianity was wildly diverse in the earliest centuries and that the heretics outnumbered the orthodox. It was not until the 3rd and 4th centuries, according to Bauer, that the orthodox began to turn the tide.

But I think there’s an additional way to test Bauer’s theory. Let’s ask a simple question: who were the bishops in second-century Christianity? If heresy was as widespread as orthodoxy, we should expect to find a number of bishops that are openly Marcionite, Ebionite, Gnostic, and beyond.

The problem for Bauer’s thesis is that this is precisely what we don’t find. [Read more…]

Thankful for Larry W. Hurtado

November 25, 2021

Well, it’s Thanksgiving Day, 2021. And there’s much to be thankful for this year, like any other year. But, I want to take a moment to remember my friend, mentor and Doktorvater, Larry W. Hurtado. After all, today marks the two-year anniversary of his passing (Nov 25th, 2019).

While most of the readers of this blog will be familiar with Larry and his scholarship, just a quick word for those who are not. Larry retired in 2011 from his post as Professor of New Testament, Language, Literature, and Theology at the University of Edinburgh (where he had served since 1996). Prior to that time, he was a professor in the department of religion at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg). He was known primarily for his work in Christology (early Christ-devotion), and Textual Criticism (particularly manuscripts as our earliest Christian artifacts).

One of his final publications, however, was not focused on either of these matters (at least not directly). Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World (Baylor, 2016), was among my favorite books by Larry. Therein, he took the reader on a fascinating journey into the early Christian movement and how it found itself to be so peculiar in the eyes of the surrounding culture.

I read this particular volume with keen interest, because it was released just prior to my own volume on Christianity in the second century: Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (SPCK/IVP Academic, 2017).

If you want to understand Larry’s long-term interests, then there are two books that are must reads. [Read more…]

What is a “Gospel” Anyway? A Few Thoughts on Gospel Genre and Why it Matters

July 19, 2021

When it comes to reading (and interpreting ) the Gospels, one of the fundamental questions pertains to the kind of document we are reading. What exactly is a “Gospel”? And did the earliest readers of these books know what they were reading?

Such questions may seem pedantic to the average reader, but they matter more than we think. Right interpretation is built on (among other things) correctly assessing the literary genre. We don’t read parables like historical narrative, nor do we read poetry (Psalms) like apocalyptic literature.

An example of confusion over “genre” in our modern world (though in a different medium) pertains to the growing practice of making internet ads look like internet content. In other words, some companies are positioning their ads to look like a news story.

This is quite controversial for an obvious reason: people read and interpret ads differently than news. People expect one thing from ads, and expect something very different from news. One is viewed as propaganda, the other is viewed as fact (though that distinction itself is subject to dispute today).

Options on the Table

So, then, what is a Gospel? Suggestions have ranged all over the map, including the Gospels as oral folk literature, as a summary of the early Christian kerygma, as accounts of a “divine man” (or aretalogy), and beyond.

But, most popular today is [Read more…]