The Gnostic Gospels

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What happened to all of the Earliest Christian writings? We know that there were over 80 different gospels in circulation in early Christian times - some of them early and more authoritative than the four heavily edited gospels that we are now familiar with. Is it possible that some of these writings were preserved by the Cathars and were discovered by the abbé Saunier.

It seems natural to us that there should be four gospels, but it was not at all obvious in early times. It took a long time for these four to be accepted. One problem was that they contradicted each on many points. A solution to this problem, adopted by Tatian in the 170s, had been to create a new comprehensive gospel, which harmonised them (and reflected the editor's hatred of women). This gospel (the Diatessaron) was widely accepted in the East but did not gain acceptance in the long term.

It was only when several gospels were considered for acceptance into a New Testament canon that they were ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These second century guesses sound more homely than say anonymous names like 1, 2, 3 and 4 or A, B, C and D, and give the impression that the authors were known, when they were not. We now tend to forget that there were not just four candidates for inclusion in the canon. There were many others, each of them purporting to be the one true gospel, and contending for primacy. The decision to select the four that are now so familiar was largely arbitrary. One of the reasons given by Irenaeus for his selection is that four is a natural number. He cited the four winds and four corners of the earth as evidence for this.

Other contenders enjoyed various degrees of acceptance, but they ultimately failed to win a place in the orthodox canon. The following are a few of the more interesting failed candidates:
The Gospel of St Thomas.

Although manuscripts of this gospel have been in circulation for centuries their authenticity was doubted until 1946. In that year a fourth century Coptic manuscript was discovered in Nag Hammadi in Egypt.

The Gospel of St Thomas.
This gospel is simply a collection of Jesus' sayings most, but not all, of which agree with the canonical gospels. The text includes additional storyteller's details omitted from the later gospels, but lacks their later allegorical interpretations. Some of the sayings which appear here, but not in the canonical gospels, had been attributed to Jesus by some sections of the early Church.
Although this manuscript dates from the fourth century the text is known to be older, since fragments of a second century manuscript have also been discovered. It is possible that the canonical gospels were partially created from the Thomas Gospel with a generous padding of background detail to make the story more interesting and convincing. (Some scholars believe that an early form of St Thomas's gospel may have been the 'Q' text. Q is a hypothetical source which would account for the material that the Matthew and Luke authors share in common, but which they could not have taken from the Mark gospel).

Thomas's gospel was probably omitted from the cannon because it was used by Gnostics. Significantly, the gospel gives no special titles to Jesus, and is silent about the resurrection. It was known to the earliest Church Fathers, accepted by the Valentinians, and arguably has a much better claim for inclusion in the canon than the gospel attributed to St John.
The Gospel according to the Hebrews (or the Gospel of the Nazarenes).

This is a work used by Jewish Christians, followers of James, who fled to Syria. It is known only from fragments. It apparently contained material similar to that in the synoptic gospels. St Jerome noted that it was believed by some to have been the original version of what we now know as the Matthew gospel. This may be the same as The Gospel of the Ebionites. According to which it was Jesus' principal aim to stop all sacrificial practices at the temple at Jerusalem.

The Book of James (or The Protevangelium).
This book deals with the birth of Jesus, embellishing the account in the Luke gospel. The miraculous child Jesus makes living birds out of clay, and performs other miracles - for example, striking dead children who offend him. The gospel was accepted as genuine by many of the Church Fathers. It gives an account of Mary remaining virgo intacta, after the birth of Jesus, and it is from this source, not the canonical gospels, that the idea of Mary's perpetual virginity developed. Indeed this book was largely responsible for the development of Mariology, and for providing such incidental details as the names of Mary's own parents: Joachim and Anne. This book explained away Jesus' brothers and sisters as step-brothers and step-sisters, Joseph's children by an earlier marriage. In the West, this ensured that the work would be rejected from the canon as the Roman Church was trying to justify the explanation that the brothers and sisters were really cousins.
The Secret Book of James

This gospel stresses the prime position among the apostles of Jesus' brother, James the Just. James led the Jewish Christians based in Jerusalem which made him unpopular amongst Pauline Christians. In the canon of the New Testament, James's rôle is generally played down and Peter's played up, which may well explain why this book was not included. It was allowed by the orthodox to become "lost", possibly deliberately destroyed, though a copy of the gospel survived in a Coptic text.

The Secret Gospel of Mark.
This was a fuller version of the conventional Mark gospel. No copy of it has survived although it is referred to in a letter from Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the second century AD. In 1958 Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University discovered in a monastery near Jerusalem a copy of a letter from Clement, one of the most venerated of the Church Fathers. The letter admitted that Mark had written material for his gospel which did not appear in the usual version of it. Clement's correspondent is instructed to lie about the existence of this missing material, even on oath . The letter quotes passages from this lost gospel, including an account of Jesus raising a dead youth. The youth "loved him and beseeched him that he might be with him". Wearing nothing but a linen cloth, the youth visited Jesus in the evening, and spent the night with him. The letter reveals that there were rumours current at the time that Jesus and the youth had been naked together. It appears that one group of Christians (the Carpocratians - regarded as heretics by Clement) knew about this secret information, and deduced from it that Christians were granted permission to engage liberally in sexual activity.

It is apparent that the canonical Mark gospel is an expurgated version of this longer gospel . It is not difficult to see why people like Clement might want to promote the edited version as the true one: the fuller version was powerful ammunition not only to Carpocratians but also to a range of Gnostics . Whatever the reasons for its exclusion, the fact is that The Secret Gospel of Mark had a strong claim to be in the canon in place of the expurgated version.
Other Books.

Other gospels, many of which were known to the Church Fathers, include the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Matthias (lost), the Gospel of Basilides (lost), the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, The Gospel of Nicodemus, incorporating the Acts of Pontius Pilate, The Gospel of the Egyptians, The Gospel of Truth. In addition there are known to have been a number of other Gnostic gospels, but these were sought out and destroyed by upholders of the Pauline line. According to the Secret Book of James 1:7 the twelve disciples each recorded their recollections and organised them into books, yet not a single one seems to have survived.

Gospels were not the only problem. Disagreements raged over other books as well. Different Church leaders favoured different books, and their selection seems to have been largely a matter of personal taste. A number of Churches, for example, admitted the anti-Semitic Epistle of Barnabas. Many of the early Church Fathers regarded the Teaching of the (Twelve) Apostles, or Didache as scriptural, though it was later omitted from the canon. Likewise, Clement of Alexandria and others admitted the Apocalypse of Peter, which was also later omitted from the canon. Well into the fourth century an influential Churchman could include the Wisdom of Solomon amongst the books of the New Testament). On the other hand some books were later admitted which had previously been regarded as non-scriptural. Irenaeus himself had excluded the third Epistle of John, the Epistle of James and the Second Epistle of Peter all of which are now included in the canon. Eusebius also declined to classify them with his 'recognised' books, and described them as disputed - along with the Second Epistle of John and the Epistle of Jude.

One of the main criteria for acceptance was a direct link with the Apostles. So out went the Shepherd of Hermas and an Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, which had previously been counted as scriptural. (The Mark gospel stayed in because of Mark's supposed link with Peter, and the Luke gospel because of Luke's supposed link with Paul). The Epistle to the Hebrews presented a problem. As Eusebius said "Who wrote the epistle is known to God alone" . Some Church Fathers (notably Clement of Alexandria and Origen) had known on stylistic grounds that this letter could not have been written by Paul, but were prepared to pretend that it was apostolic in order to allow it into the canon. By the terms of a deal done at the Council of Carthage in AD 419 it was accepted as being Paul's work. Eastern Churches accepted this conceit, but the Church at Rome refused to, and thus rejected the epistle on the grounds that it was not apostolic. Rome relented sometime in the fifth or sixth century and fell back into line with the Eastern Churches. Modern scholars agree with the original Roman view that the work was not written by Paul.

Many works hung in the balance. The Epistles of James and Jude, the Second Epistle of Peter, the second and third Epistle of John, and the Book of Revelation were disputed but were eventually successful. The Book of Revelation, which early Christians had considered the work of a known heretic , was admitted on the grounds that its author was St John the apostle, though later the story was changed and it was attributed to a mysterious St John the Divine. The Acts of Paul and the Apocalypse of Peter were likewise disputed but proved unsuccessful.

A number of letters purportedly written by St Paul were excluded from the canon at an early stage - for example the fake Third Epistle to the Corinthians. Fourteen letters were eventually accepted. Of these, it is now widely accepted by scholars that at least four (including Hebrews) were not written by Paul. Some scholars hold that as many as seven of these letters are not his. A comparison of writing styles shows that the three pastoral letters (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) were all written by the same hand, but that that hand was not the one responsible for the other letters ). On the other hand textual critics have evidence that at least three genuine letters by St Paul never made it into the canon, and have since been lost. Of the letters that did make it into the canon, it is widely accepted that some of them are not original works but edited versions of selected passages from two or three separate writings, fused together.

When we turn to the 7 Catholic (or General) letters the position is even worse. Not one was written by its supposed author. Furthermore, a number of similar letters were excluded from the canon by the Church Fathers, though their claim to be included is at least as good as those that were successful. The second letter of Peter is generally accepted to have been written by someone other than the author of the first letter of Peter. Much of it is a reworking of Jude, probably attributed to Peter in order to enhance its status.

Other writings rejected from the canon include Acts of individual apostles: the Acts of John, Acts of Paul, Acts of Peter, Acts of Andrew, and Acts of Thomas; various apocalypses: the Apocalypses of Peter, of Paul, and of Thomas; Infancy gospels such as the Infancy Gospel of James already referred to, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas the Israelite; and the Epistles of the Apostles, also called the Testament of Our Lord in Galilee. Some well known 'bible stories' are not from our present canon, but from these works . Another indication of how uncertain the canon really was may be seen from the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the earliest and most authoritative copies of the books of the New Testament. It includes the Epistle of Barnabas and part of the Shepherd of Hermas.