Jesus Tried and True: Why the Four Canonical Gospels Provide the Best Picture of Jesus

By H. H. Drake Williams lll

Are the gospels found within the New Testament superior to others? Has the church unfairly chosen Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John while leaving out many others? Are there truly lost Christianities that would enrich our understanding of Jesus? Would modern-day seekers as well as followers of Jesus be better served by including gospels outside of the New Testament in their understanding of Jesus?

Jesus Tried and True answers these questions by examining the date, source, and reception of the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and then comparing this data with the other gospels. It assesses this information by looking within these gospels and also evaluating early church history, examining the writings of early church writers such as Papias, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Eusebius. It then compares these findings with the date, source, and reception of the non-canonical gospels that have received the most attention lately such as the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Philip, and Gospel of Peter. There is also a brief survey of thirteen of the most important non-canonical gospels. The survey provides an opinion on the dependence of these upon the gospels within the New Testament. Jesus Tried and True affirms the superiority of the New Testament gospels. It concludes by addressing whether non-canonical gospels are "lost Christianities" and also whether the designation "apocryphal" is appropriate for other gospels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781621896371

H. H. Drake Williams lll

H. H. Drake Williams III, PhD, is Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, and the Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Academic Dean at Tyndale Theological Seminary in Badhoevedorp, the Netherlands. He is the author of The Wisdom of the Wise: The Presence and Function of Scripture within 1 Cor 1:18--3:23 (2001), and Making Sense of the Bible: A Study of Ten Key Themes Traced through the Scriptures (2006).

Book preview

Introduction

The church has taught throughout the ages that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. This viewpoint is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four gospels of the New Testament. It is also found from the times of the early Christian creeds, such as the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed.

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Recently, however, there have been novel viewpoints about Jesus that are getting attention. A significant source for these doubts has been the heightened awareness of non-canonical gospels. These gospels are not a part of the New Testament and have largely been out of the public eye. Many would call them apocryphal, meaning heretical or unorthodox. In the past, they were considered to be of questionable value and authority, but recently many are taking fresh interest in non-canonical gospels.

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The most noteworthy of these is the Gospel of Thomas. This Gospel does not include any miracles, stories, or anything about the crucifixion. Instead, it contains 114 secret teachings of Jesus which claim to be recorded by Didymus Judas Thomas. Some of these sayings appear to resemble the New Testament gospels, while others are clearly different from anything in the Bible. These present a secret knowledge imparted from Jesus about the world, and offer a mystical and elitist version of Christian living focused on self-denial, secret interpretations, and higher realities. Anyone who understands these, the text claims, will have eternal life.

The Gospel of Thomas was found in the desert of Egypt in a place just outside of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Besides Thomas, there were other gospels that were found there that are also attracting attention. The Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth, and the Gospel of the Egyptians were also found in the same location. Like the Gospel of Thomas, these promote the search for hidden truth, deny worldly existence, and encourage elitism. They are generally known to be Gnostic gospels.

There are other non-canonical gospels that provide information about parts of Jesus’ life that are not found in the New Testament. For example, the Gospel of Peter recounts what happened between Jesus’ death and his resurrection appearances to his disciples. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas provides entertaining reports of Jesus’ early life. The Protevangelium of James recounts the birth, young life, and betrothal of Mary, and then Jesus’ own birth. In Papyrus Egerton 2, there are several confrontations that Jesus had with Jewish leaders, and then a few additional miracles in addition to those that are found in the New Testament.

There are several Jewish-Christian gospels. Jesus’ life and earliest following was in the context of Judaism. These share a Jewish background but support Jesus of Nazareth as the chosen Messiah. While there is no full length manuscript preserved from these Gospels, there are fragments available. Their titles are known through the works of early Christian writers and include the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Nazareans, and the Gospel of the Ebionites.

One final category of non-canonical gospels includes those books that involve dialogues and secret revelations. There is the Gospel of Mary, the only gospel which claims to be written by a woman. It presents a secret vision granted to Mary Magdalene by Jesus, which she now relates to the apostles. The Gospel of Judas is the latest to be discovered. It contains a dialogue between Jesus and Judas three days before Jesus’ last Passover and completely recasts the church’s understanding of Judas as the betrayer. It paints Judas as a hero rather than as a villain. These are just brief descriptions of some of the other gospels.

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Problems arise, however, when these other gospels are being used unfairly to challenge the historic viewpoint of Jesus and the way that the church has represented him for centuries. This took place most notoriously when Dan Brown released his novel and film, The Da Vinci Code. These presented the church as arbitrarily choosing certain gospels and leaving others out. According to Brown, the Roman Emperor Constantine appeared to choose only four gospels, the ones that he wanted to have, while neglecting approximately eighty others. This, as the novel says, took place at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. According to Brown, it was uncertain whether Jesus was divine or human until this Council, nearly 300 years after the life of Christ.⁴ Brown’s book and movie caught the interest of millions.

Following the release of the Da Vinci Code, the discovery of the Gospel of Judas was used to challenge the church’s viewpoint about Jesus. The British newspaper The Daily Mail ran an initial story with the headline, The Gospel of Judas Iscariot: World Exclusive ‘Greatest Archaeological Discovery of all Time’ Threat to 2000 years of Christian teaching.⁵ Many scholars were not willing to go so far, but some stated that the Gospel of Judas will change our opinion of who Jesus is. Implying that it would turn Christianity on its head, Bart Ehrman wrote concerning the Gospel of Judas, It will open up new vistas for understanding Jesus and the religious movement he founded.

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There are many books that are being circulated which are challenging the historic viewpoint of Jesus as is found in the canonical New Testament Gospels. In an English bookshop in Amsterdam near where I live and work, the religion section is filled with books about other gospels with titles that provocatively cast doubt upon the way Jesus has been historically portrayed. The titles of a few of these works relating to these other gospels express the doubts clearly: The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus,⁷ The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth,⁸ and Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths we never knew.

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Some of these books unashamedly cast doubt on Jesus as presented in the church’s tradition. For example, in the New York Times Bestseller Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know about Them), Bart Ehrman presents a wild diversity in the early church. He writes:

You might think that from the beginning, Christianity was always basically one thing: a religion descended from Jesus, as interpreted by Paul, leading to the church of the Middle Ages on down to the present. But things were not that simple. About a hundred fifty years after Jesus’ death we find a wide range of different Christian groups claiming to represent the views of Jesus and his disciples but having completely divergent perspectives, far more divergent than anything even that made it into the New Testament.

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Later in this book, Ehrman claims that one group of Christians emerged victorious in the conflict between divergent groups. He calls this winning side the proto-orthodox group, the spiritual ancestors of the church’s traditional viewpoint of Jesus. This group includes early Christians such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and others. They then labeled all of the competing viewpoints as heretical (unfairly according to Ehrman).

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While some are not promoting a conspiracy theory for censorship, others are trying to draw attention away to other ideas about Jesus found in hidden, non-canonical gospels. In a New York Times Bestseller, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Elaine Pagels encourages people to see Jesus beyond the description of the church and the New Testament.¹² Following a sincere reflection on the loss of her young son, Pagels explains how her search for strength during this crisis led her to find the Gospel of Thomas.

As part of her presentation, she draws attention to a diversity of Christian expression in the early centuries. She writes:

Numerous gospels circulated among various Christian groups, ranging from those of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, to such writings as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Truth, as well as many other secret teachings, myths and poems attributed to Jesus or his disciples.

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These expressions of Christian faith, according to Pagels, became unfairly excluded and suppressed. As a result, most modern forms of Christianity emphasize right belief of propositions rather than the faith to recognize the light within each person.¹⁴ This is unfair, in her opinion, but can be recovered if one looks beyond the gospels of the New Testament and reads the Gospel of Thomas.

Besides these popular presentations, there are some within academic quarters who are also promoting the value of non-canonical gospels over those of canonical gospels. A group known as the Jesus Seminar has been promoting a reexamination of the picture of Jesus as he has been told through the New Testament and the church. This group of academics, which was founded in 1985, has been critical of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from its inception. They have been promoting other gospels that develop the picture of Jesus beyond what Robert Funk, the founder of the Seminar calls the holy four.

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The Jesus Seminar is recognized to be a radical group which challenges historic viewpoints. For example, Richard Hays, a well-known New Testament scholar, said that the Jesus Seminar has a set of unconventional views about Jesus and the gospels . . . Their attempt to present these views as the ‘assured results of critical scholarship’ is—one must say it—reprehensible deception.

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Despite objections such as this, the members of the Jesus Seminar have been promoting the value of other gospels for many years. They have their own publishing company called Polebridge Press, and they conduct lecture series and workshops in the United States. As New Testament scholar Ben Witherington has stated, their publisher continues to print volumes on the Gospel of Thomas and Q "to place the material in Thomas on equal footing with what we find in the Synoptic Gospels."¹⁷ They continue to produce books and seminars for academic and popular audiences.¹⁸ Their writings and opinions are being increasingly quoted in popular media.

These efforts from the Jesus Seminar and others are appealing to a popular audience that is becoming increasingly skeptical of the church and of the way history has been told. While the person of Jesus still remains revered, many within the broader populace seem interested in something different. Historian Philip Jenkins has noticed this trend and has commented upon it in his book Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way. He claims that the non-canonical gospels tell us less about the beginnings of Christianity than about the interest groups who seek to use them today; about the mass media, and how religion is packaged as popular culture; and . . . more generally, about the changing directions of contemporary American religion.¹⁹ People seem interested in something else just because it is different.

Before accepting novel views about Jesus, it is important to consider the history that declared the canonical gospels superior to the others. It is the purpose of this book to summarize the latest discussion for educated readers and draw conclusions. Rather than concentrating on specific non-canonical gospels like the Gospel of Thomas or Judas as many works do, it will focus broadly on why the canonical gospels are superior to the non-canonical ones. It will offer a summary of the main issues involved and then bring some of the latest research to bear.

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Jesus Tried and True is organized around three categories: date, authorship, and reception. The first chapter will consider the dates of different gospels. Those closest to Jesus’ life should have an advantage over those of later date. The second chapter will consider the source of the canonical gospels. Those written from the perspective of eyewitnesses of Jesus have priority over those where source is uncertain. It will compare claims about this from the canonical gospels in comparison to the non-canonical ones. The third chapter will examine the reception of the four canonical gospels in early Christian literature in comparison to the other gospels. The early writings from church history are often ignored. These writings from the second and third century do provide early history’s commentary on the relative value of the canonical gospels over non-canonical ones.

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The final chapter provides an overview of the most significant non-canonical gospels. While many have appealed to the value of other gospels, the actual contents are at times not considered. This chapter will provide representative samples of these works and draw conclusions about the presentation about Jesus as well as their relationship with the canonical gospels.

Jesus is significant. Former president of the American Historical Association and author of over eighty books, Kenneth Latourette understood this. He had this to say when he spoke at the Presidential address for this society. He said, As the centuries pass the evidence is accumulating that, measured by his effect on history, Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet. That influence appears to be mounting.²² Such ideas could be repeated by countless others throughout history.

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What one decides about Jesus is important. These conclusions are reached from evaluating historical sources. It is the hope that this volume will raise the value of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the sources that define the remarkable person of Jesus.

1. For these creeds, see Appendix 1.

2. While the term apocryphal has been used for many years to describe these books, it does have negative associations. This volume will use the terms canonical and non-canonical for distinguishing gospels. The canonical gospels are the ones in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. All other gospels will be considered non-canonical. Further discussion of the term apocryphal will occur in the conclusion in chapter 5.

3. See further chapter 4.

4. Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 231–33.

5. Greatest Archaelogical Discovery, The Mail.

6. Ehrman, Christianity Turned on its Head, 80.

7. See Funk, Five Gospels.

8. See Meyer, Gnostic Gospels of Jesus.

9. See Ehrman, Lost Christianities.

10. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 191.

11. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 197–98. See also Ehrman, Lost Christianities.

12. Pagels, Beyond Belief.

13. Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, xxiii.

14. Such ideas are then propagated by various other writers, such as Krosney, Lost Gospel, 183.

15. Miller, Complete Gospels, 3.

16. Hays, Corrected Jesus, 44.

17. Witherington, Jesus Quest, 48.

18. See the Jesus Seminar’s website for further information: http://www.westarinstitute.org.

19. Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 5.

20. Witherington, Gospel Code and Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code were specifically addressed to the questions raised by Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Porter and Heath, Lost Gospel of Judas and N. T. Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Judas, addressed the relationship between recent discoveries and the Bible.

21. The hermeneutical proximity is valuable. Cf. Casey, Sacred Reading, 105.

22. Latourette, Christian Understanding of History, 272.

23. E.g., Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man towards the unseen that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. Across the chasm of eighteen hundred years Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy . . . He asks for the human heart . . . All who sincerely believe in Him experience that supernatural love towards Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable, it is altogether beyond the scope of man’s creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. The quote is recorded in Ballard, Miracles of Unbelief, 265.

Chapter One

Gospel Dating

When evaluating historical sources, the one closer in time to the person or the event is generally preferred. In everyday living, we recognize this to be true. For example, at reunions, families often relive the past to some degree. While reunions are a time to become reacquainted, they provide opportunities to remember past events and people. Around a dinner table, family members may tell the story about a great grandparent or an especially meaningful Christmas celebration. Naturally, in these conversations, those who lived closest in time to the person or the event have a much more valued opinion than those who remember from a distance. The recollection closer in time is generally more reliable than the one that is more distant.

So it is with opinions about Jesus. The one closer in time to when Jesus lived has more worth than the one further from when he lived. This is helpful to keep in mind as the value of different gospels is considered. Gospels that were written closer in time to the earthly life of Jesus have a greater worth than those that are dated later. With all of the interest being placed on other gospels recently, some may not realize that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have been considered to be written significantly earlier than the non-canonical gospels.

This chapter will investigate the dates of both the canonical and non-canonical gospels. First, it will consider the range of dates for canonical gospels. While a specific date for each of these gospels will not be agreed upon unanimously, the dating of the canonical gospels can be placed within a fairly agreed upon range. Second, it will consider the dates of several non-canonical gospels. It will pay special attention to two non-canonical gospels which some are claiming to be earlier, namely, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter. It will then compare the dates of the non-canonical gospels with the canonical ones. Finally, it will draw conclusions about the value of canonical gospels in relation to the non-canonical ones.

Dating the Canonical Gospels

As dates are being considered within early Christianity, we should start with matters where there is little doubt. Jesus lived in the early decades of the first century AD.¹ He ministered in the late 20s or early 30s and was crucified, at the latest, by AD 33.² Shortly thereafter, the apostle Paul was converted. Paul began to write his letters from the late 40s until the early 60s AD.³ His death occurred between 64 and 65, and Peter’s death occurred between AD 64 and 68.

Shortly after most of Paul’s letters were written, most scholars believe that the canonical gospels were composed. Most date these works to the first century AD. What follows is a brief survey of dates for each of the canonical gospels.

Synoptic Gospels

Scholars recognize that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are similar in many aspects. The contents, vocabulary, and sentence structure are similar between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Mark’s Gospel is also similar to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. As a result, these three have been considered the Synoptic Gospels.

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When scholars compare the contents of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they notice that there appears to be a written dependency on each other. This can be seen by several factors. First, scholars notice the agreement in order within many sections of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In Table 1, the agreement between the Gospel of Mark and Luke is most apparent, although there is substantial agreement with the order in the Gospel of Matthew, too. The placement of the choosing of the twelve disciples is the only difference in order between Mark and