The Appalachian Archive

Robert Morrison Randolph

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781666728873
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Religious Poetry
• Index: Literature

This is a Christian mystic's archive of writings about feeling God's abiding presence and love in all things, even in the poet himself, but also feeling pain and loneliness because human finitude prohibits knowing God fully. He cannot wholly know the God he wholly loves. Finally the poet comes to feel in the natural world God reaching out to the poet personally, which brings hope and peace.

1

Introduction

Gospels in Early Christianity

“Apocryphal” Gospels and the Gospels of the New Testament

In addition to the Gospels of the New Testament, numerous other writings were composed about Jesus and persons in his immediate environment from an early time. These are often designated as “apocryphal”—i.e., hidden—gospels (the Greek word apókryphos means “hidden”). They contain numerous traditions about Jesus that go beyond the New Testament and sometimes even contradict it. If these writings are included, then the Jesus picture of Christianity becomes much more varied than the picture that can be derived from the Bible. Moreover, with regard to the designation “apocryphal,” we have to ask in what sense these texts and their pictures of Jesus were or are indeed “hidden.” Today, the apocryphal writings are readily accessible in critical editions and translations and are kept hidden by no one. They do not, however, belong to the Bible. How did there come to be a distinction between biblical and “apocryphal” gospels?

Around 180 CE, Irenaeus of Lyon composed a large-scale work in five books titled Against Heresies. In this writing he provides extensive critical engagement with teachings that, in his view, falsify the truth of the Christian confession. In Book 3, he comes to speak of the witness of the Gospels. Right at the beginning, he emphasizes that the gospel of God has been handed down to the church through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This one gospel is, therefore, “four-formed,” just as there are also four corners of the earth, four directions of the wind, and four cherubim before the throne of God (cf. Ezek 1:5–10 and Rev 4:6–11). The church spread over the whole earth is thus based on four pillars—namely, the four Gospels—and corresponds in this way to the order of the world, which reflects at the same time the Son of God’s economy of salvation, as well as the four covenants that God made with Adam, Noah, Moses, and, finally, through the gospel.

There is obviously a problem concealed behind this forceful rationale of the fourfold form of the one gospel. Irenaeus is here defending this four-form against its contestation by people who claim that the Gospels are not free of error and that they also do not agree with one another. He also argues that Christian groups or individual teachers such as the Ebionites, Marcion, and the Valentinians rely on only one of the four Gospels and interpret it against its sense. According to him, this meaning discloses itself only from the overall consideration of the one four-formed gospel. Finally, Irenaeus writes about the followers of Valentinus, a Christian teacher who was active in Rome around 140 CE, and vehemently contests their claim that they possess more gospels than the four. In this context, he mentions a work that they call the “Gospel of Truth,” although, in his view, it does not, in fact, contain the truth handed down by the apostles (on this, see the section on the Gospel of Truth in chap. 6).

Irenaeus’ remarks show that it was by no means uncontroversial whether all four Gospels and only these gospels present the authoritative witness to Jesus. Irenaeus, therefore, defends the four-ness of the Gospels both against its reduction to only one gospel and against the view that there are, beyond them, other gospels that are to be regarded as authoritative. After all, it is by no means obvious that there should be precisely four gospels that contain the authoritative witness to Jesus for the church rather than one or two or three. One could just as easily supply rationales for these numbers—for example, with reference to the one God, to the two natures of Jesus Christ, or to the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The fact that Irenaeus insists that the truth is based on four Gospels can only be explained, therefore, by the circumstance that these four Gospels were already widespread and recognized in Christian communities. And this is also the only plausible explanation for why all three of the Gospels that are quite similar to one another—namely, the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (which are also called Synoptic, i.e., Gospels that can be read together)—made it into the New Testament and not just one or two of them. This is especially noteworthy in the case of the Gospel of Mark, whose content is almost completely contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Irenaeus uses the term euangelion—the Greek word for “good news”—in two ways: 1) for the one gospel of Jesus Christ in its fourfold form, and 2) as a designation for the individual writings, which are called the “Gospel according to Matthew,” the “Gospel according to Mark,” the “Gospel according to Luke,” and the “Gospel according to John.” He presupposes, therefore, that the term euangelion is used as a designation for certain writings, while also being familiar with the meaning “good news (of Jesus Christ).” This double usage can be traced back to the beginnings of Christianity. In his letters, Paul frequently mentions “the gospel,” which he describes more specifically as “the gospel of God,” “the gospel of Jesus Christ,” and, also, as “my gospel.” With “gospel” Paul thus designates the message of God’s saving action through Jesus Christ that he proclaims. In the Gospel of Mark, the term euangelion is then applied to the story of the ministry and fate of Jesus. The first sentence already reads “The beginning of the euangelion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Euangelion then occurs at multiple points in the Gospel of Mark: Jesus proclaims “the euangelion of God” (1:14), Jesus and the euangelion are mentioned alongside each other (8:35; 10:29); and the euangelion is to be proclaimed to all the nations in the world (13:10; 14:9). In the Gospel of Mark, the proclamation of the gospel of the imminent reign of God through Jesus is thus closely connected with his activity and fate.

From this starting point, the term euangelion became established as a designation for the narratives of the activity and fate of Jesus around the turn from the first to the second century. In order to distinguish them from each other, they were called “According to Matthew,” “According to Mark,” etc. These designations thus became necessary only in the moment at which multiple gospels were known and used together. The distinctive designation “Gospel according to + name” expresses the view that there is one gospel available in different forms. Later gospels—for example, the “Gospel according to Thomas” or the “Gospel according to Mary”—take up this designation and apply it to their presentations of Jesus. In this way, they claim that they likewise—or in contrast to the other gospels—contain authoritative Jesus traditions. By contrast, the plural “gospels” is first encountered around the middle of the second century CE in the writings of the Christian philosopher and martyr Justin. He designates the writings of the apostles as “memoirs” (memorabilia, a literary characterization that was also used for Xenophon’s work Memorabilia of Socrates) and explains that the “Memoirs of the Apostles” are also called “gospels” (1 Apol. 66.2). Later, the term “gospel” was also used for writings that do not call themselves “gospel” and that sometimes differ clearly from the Gospels of the New Testament. In this expanded meaning it is applied to texts that present the origin, teaching, activity, and fate of Jesus in different literary forms. This expansion has led to the fact that in the orbit of the Gospels we also find texts that deal with persons from the environment of Jesus, such as his parents, John the Baptist, and Pilate. Writings that relate to the person of Jesus with biographical intent can be gathered together in this expanded understanding as “gospels and related literature.”

The remarks of other early Christian theologians can be placed alongside those of Irenaeus. In his work Stromateis (“Patchworks” or “Miscellanies”), Clement of Alexandria, a contemporary of Irenaeus, quotes from a “Gospel according to the Egyptians,” but notes that the quotation does not come “from one of the four Gospels handed down to us”:

This is why Cassian says, “When Salome inquired when the things she had asked about would become known, the Lord replied: ‘When you (pl.) trample on the garment of shame and when the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female.’” The first thing to note, then, is that we do not find this saying in the four Gospels handed down to us, but in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. (Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.92.2–93.1, trans. Ehrman/Pleše; see also below on the Gospel according to the Egyptians)

In another place he quotes a saying from the Gospel according to the Hebrews:

Which also is written in the Gospel according to the Hebrews: He who marveled shall reign, and he who reigned shall rest. (Strom. 2.45.5; see also 5.96.3; a similar saying occurs in the Gospel of Thomas, saying 2).

A letter of the bishop Serapion to one of his communities is quoted in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, which emerged in the first decades of the fourth century. The letter, which goes back to around 180 CE, mentions a “gospel under the name of Peter”:

We, my brothers, receive Peter and all the apostles as we receive Christ, but the writings falsely attributed to them we are experienced...