In 1945, a farmer named Muhammad ‘Ali al-Samman found a trove of ancient codices while searching for fertilizer. He and his brothers returned home with the thirteen papyrus books. That’s when his mother apparently used a few of the papyri as kindling in their stone oven.[i] Most of the texts, however, survived the kindling pile and ended up in the hands of scholars. Discovered near Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt, these codices included more than fifty texts, including several that have been dubbed “Gospels.”
One writer refers to these Nag Hammadi documents as “the texts of the original Christians”[ii] and implies that some of the “lost Gospels” were written before the New Testament Gospels. Gospels such as these were—according to the claims of one Huffington Post columnist—“runners up” that were left on “the cutting room floor” when the books of the New Testament were finalized.
If that’s true, could it be that some of the so-called “lost Gospels” represent more reliable testimonies about Jesus than the New Testament? Could it be that these long-lost texts should find a place alongside the Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Might these documents provide historical information about the real Jesus that’s missing in the New Testament Gospels?
Not likely—and here’s why.
When Were the “Lost Gospels” Written?
In the first place, there are fewer than twenty “lost Gospels” that even might have originated before the end of the second century A.D.—a far cry from the claim made in the bestselling The Da Vinci Code that “more than eighty gospels” provided possible authoritative accounts of the life of Jesus.
Rewriting the Script in the Second Century
The authors of several of these texts simply adapted one or more New Testament Gospels to fit the teachings of their particular sect.
- Gospel of the Ebionites and Gospel of the Nazoreans, for example, seem to have been reworked versions of Matthew’s Gospel, edited—or, in the words of an ancient theologian named Epiphanius of Salamis, “mutilated”—by certain sects to fit their distinctive theology.[iv]
- Likewise, around the year 140, a teacher named Marcion trimmed the portions from Luke’s Gospel that emphasized Jesus’s human nature and Jewish origins to produce his Gospel of the Lord.
- Other “lost Gospels”—including Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary, and Gospel of the Savior—model many of their statements on sayings previously known from the Gospel According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke.[v] Since they draw from the New Testament Gospels, these Gospels must have emerged after the New Testament Gospels. So, even though these Gospels boast names such as “Philip” and “Mary,” these individuals were clearly not the sources behind these documents.
Others of the “lost Gospels” clearly reflect theological discussions of later time periods.
- For example, Gospel of Truth comes from the community of Valentinus, a mid-second century teacher who proclaimed that Jesus was not truly human. Since Valentinus was active in the mid-second century, Gospel of Truth must have been written at that time or later.[vi]
- Similarly, Gospel of the Egyptians focuses on forms of self-denial—such as abstaining from sexual relations with the goal of transcending all distinctions between female and male—that became most prevalent in the late second century.[vii] At one point in Gospel of the Egyptians, this Gospel portrays Salome as asking Jesus when she would receive a fuller knowledge of God. To this, Jesus supposedly replied, “When the male with the female is neither male nor female”[viii]—a phrase that fits most naturally among the second-century supporters of an offshoot of Christianity known as “Gnosticism.”
- Gospel of Judas seems to represent the views of another Gnostic sect, known as the “Cainite” sect. Cainites were fond of reworking familiar biblical narratives—the stories of Cain, Esau, and Korah in the Hebrew Scriptures, for example—so that the villains became heroes.[ix] That’s what happens in Gospel of Judas: Judas Iscariot is commanded by Jesus to become his betrayer. In the end, the other disciples stone Judas to death, and Judas becomes a heroic martyr. These sorts of fractured Bible stories became popular among the Cainites in the mid-to-late second century; so, it would seem that the Gospel of Judas was written no earlier than the mid-second century, probably later. Despite the clamoring about Gospel of Judas a few years ago in the news media—“a story that could challenge our deepest beliefs,”[x] the commercials claimed—the book was written at least a generation after the latest New Testament Gospel.
What about Gospel of Thomas and Q?
So what about Gospel of Thomas and Q? When did these “lost Gospels” come into existence? Were they really the Gospels of the first Christians?
In the first place, many people are surprised to discover that Q isn’t a Gospel at all! Q is a hypothetical source that explains how the Gospel According to Matthew and Luke came to include so many identical teachings that don’t show up in Mark’s Gospel. The idea is that the authors of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels must have worked from a common, early Christian source that recorded teachings attributed to Jesus. While this theory does seem to fit the available evidence, it’s a theory with no physical proof—no Q document has ever been found. Even if such a document did exist, its contents would be far from scandalous. The contents of a Q document would simply be the teachings of Jesus that the Gospel According to Matthew and Luke happen to share!
The case of Gospel of Thomas is a bit more complex. Gospel of Thomas isn’t hypothetical; it has survived quite intact. At the same time, it doesn’t really narrate the life of Jesus; instead, it’s a list of sayings and brief teachings that are attributed to Jesus. More than half of these teachings appear in one or more of the New Testament Gospels—the parable of the soils, for example, and Jesus’s declaration that “the kingdom of God is among you” (compare, for example, Mark 4:2-9; Luke 17:21; Gospel of Thomas 3:3; 9:1-5).
The simple style and arrangement of the sayings in Gospel of Thomas have suggested to some scholars that this Gospel emerged before the New Testament Gospels. Still, the earliest mention of Gospel of Thomas is found in a late second-century writing from a church leader named Hippolytus of Rome—and even this reference is uncertain.[xi] The earliest known fragments of Gospel of Thomas come from the late second century. Most important, the compiler of Gospel of Thomas seems to have known one or more of the New Testament Gospels. Here’s one example of why this is likely: In Mark’s Gospel—which nearly all scholars would date before the Gospel According to Luke—a somewhat awkward-sounding clause closes a parable about a lamp: “For nothing is hidden if not to be revealed” (Mark 4:22). Luke’s Gospel smooths this sentence so that it reads, “For nothing is hidden that will not be revealed” (Luke 8:17). If—as some critics claim—Gospel of Thomas was written earlier than the New Testament Gospels, we’d expect the form of this teaching in Gospel of Thomas to be closer to Mark’s more rustic wording than to Luke’s polished clause.
But that’s not what we find when we read Gospel of Thomas.
In fact, Gospel of Thomas is closer to the smoothed wording of the Gospel According to Luke,[xii] and this isn’t the only point at which Gospel of Thomas follows later traditions instead of earlier ones.
What this suggests is that the surviving form of Gospel of Thomas may well have emerged after Mark’s Gospel—and most likely after Luke’s Gospel as well. Gospel of Thomas as it has survived to us seems to have been compiled well after the New Testament Gospels were in circulation.[xiii]
Why the Lost Gospels Were Lost
The only surviving Gospels that are traceable to first-century eyewitnesses of Jesus are the ones found in the New Testament. Even in the first century AD, testimony that came from apostolic eyewitnesses of the risen Lord was considered to be uniquely authoritative.
- When the apostles and their associates began to write, their written interpretations of the gospel were every bit as authoritative as their spoken instructions. “If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter,” Paul said in his letter to the Thessalonians, “take special note of that person and do not associate with him” (2 Thessalonians 3:14).
- Before the end of the first century, Christians already referred to Paul’s writings as “Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15–16), and Paul himself cited words that would become part of Luke’s Gospel as “Scripture” (Luke 10:7; 1 Timothy 5:18).
Christians did disagree at times about whether a few texts in the New Testament could be clearly traced to apostolic eyewitnesses—but a clear standard existed from the very beginning. The texts that were received were received because they were traceable to firsthand testimony about Jesus. The lost Gospels were rejected because they couldn’t be clearly connected to persons who walked and talked with Jesus.
To learn more about this topic, take a look at the book and video series How We Got the Bible Made Easy.
[i] Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979) xiii-xiv.
[ii] T. Freke and P. Gandy, The Laughing Jesus (New York: Three Rivers, 2006) 4.
[iii] While I have attempted to cover the most significant “lost Gospels,” the list provided here is not exhaustive. For a more thorough treatment of the “lost Gospels,” see D. Bock, The Missing Gospels (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2006).
[iv] For Gospel of the Ebionites as deriving some traditions from the Gospel According to Matthew and Luke, see R. Cameron, ed., The Other Gospels (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Westminster, 1982) 97-106.
[v] For Gospel of Philip and Gospel of Mary as deriving some traditions from the New Testament Gospels, see C. Tuckett, “Synoptic Traditions in Some Nag Hammadi and Related Texts,” in Vigiliae Christianae 36 (1982): 173-190. Gospel of Philip also seems to presuppose a Valentinian Christology, which would place the text in the mid-to-late second century (W. Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, trans. by R. Wilson [Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox, 1992] 179-208). With reference to Gospel of the Savior, see B. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 52.
[vi] Cf. reference to the Valentinian movement in Irenaeus, Contra haereses, 3:11:9. The Valentinian affinities in Gospel of Truth would seem to place the Gospel in the mid-to-late second century (H. Attridge and G. MacRae, “Gospel of Truth,” The Nag Hammadi Library rev. ed., ed. J. Robinson [Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1990] 38; J. Robinson, ed., The Coptic Gnostic Library vol. 1 [Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2000] 76-81).
[vii] J. Robinson, ed., The Coptic Gnostic Library vol. 2, 38.
[viii] Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 3:92:2—3:93:1: <http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement-stromata-book3.html>. Interestingly, while Clement seemed to recognize Gospel of the Egyptians as including some valid information about Jesus’s sayings (3:45:3; 3:63:1; 3:64:1; 3:66:1-2), he also viewed the content of this Gospel as suspect and as subordinate to the Gospel According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Immediately after the quotation cited here, Clement was quick to add, “Now notice, first of all, that we don’t find this saying in the four Gospels that have been passed down to us—only in Gospel of the Egyptians” (3:93:1).
[ix] Irenaeus, Contra haereses, 1:31:1. Bart Ehrman adds the suggestion that the community in which Gospel of Judas emerged was struggling to incorporate a Jewish heritage in the aftermath of failed Jewish apocalyptic expectations (The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot [New York: Oxford University Press, 2006] 115-180). Ehrman questions whether the “Cainites” actually existed or if the sect was merely a rhetorical invention of second-century Christians. While it is possible that the term “Cainites” was created for the sake of rhetorical invective, it seems that Irenaeus (as well as Tertullian and Hippolytus, who also mentioned the Cainites) referred to some real sect that reworked biblical narratives, turning apparent villains into heroes. Even with his skepticism about the Cainite sect, Ehrman dates Gospel of Judas around the same date as evangelical scholars, well into the second century (Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, 3, 54-65).
[x] <http://abc.net.au/tv/guide/netw/200606/programs/ZY8369A001D25062006T193000.htm>
[xi] See Hippolytus of Rome, Philosophoumena, 5:7. It is possible that this reference is not to Gospel of Thomas but to a later text known as Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which recounts supposed incidents from Jesus’s childhood.
[xii] C. Evans, Fabricating Jesus (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2006) 64-65.
[xiii] In N. Perrin, Thomas, the Other Gospel (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 2007), arguments have been advanced for a late second-century Syriac origin for the surviving form of Gospel of Thomas.
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