1: Second-Century Challenges to the Death and Resurrection of Jesus

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Second-Century Challenges to the Death and Resurrection of Jesus

In the previous volume, it has been argued from a variety of angles that Jesus was indeed a figure of human history, with his existence being corroborated in several different ways from varying sources. For example, dozens of reported facts can be gleaned from more than a dozen non-Christian writers, though many of these references are brief, in addition to many Christian writers (from both canonical as well as quite early noncanonical texts) along with some helpful archaeological artifacts. With such a widespread amalgamation of sources, it is rather amazing and quite diffi­cult to understand how Jesus’s existence can be denied, though even as atheist New Testament specialist Bart Ehrman states, this attitude is in large part due to the vast majority of these doubts being expressed by individuals who are not trained in any of the relevant research areas.

Volume 1 of this study was largely concerned with the data that can be drawn from the canonical New Testament texts, with special emphasis on passages located in Paul’s Epistles, the Gospels, and Acts. These books are by far the oldest sources for Jesus and represent the most crucial resources ever since the earliest church. This chapter addresses the next generation of writings about Jesus that the majority of specialist scholars usually date after the canonical texts, though there are discussions about the composition dates for a few of them. These later sources were also about Jesus, though they often depicted quite different themes and emphases. These postcanonical writings will be divided into Tier 1 and Tier 2 layers for clearer reference. It is difficult to be precise in every case, but the Tier 1 category will be composed of texts usually thought to have been composed from about AD 100 to just before 150, while Tier 2 will include later writings that are usually dated from 150 to roughly 200.

Since only writings with themes chiefly revolving around Jesus and Christianity are considered in each of these two tiers, neither historical writings that simply mention Jesus once or twice (such as Josephus or Tacitus) nor the Jewish Mishnah are included in this chapter. Thus, exempting the earlier canonical references treated in volume 1, the sources for Jesus being treated here were mostly composed between 100 and 200 years after Jesus’s crucifixion.

Speaking generally, the earliest wave of serious challenges to the general canonical period largely began somewhat later, after the beginning of what has been identified above as the Tier 1 sources. For the purposes at hand in this chapter, the facts of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection were especially unchallenged.

At any rate, the major challenges to orthodoxy largely started arriving on the scene quite late in the first century. The challengers sometimes even started rival movements featuring their own house churches and variations in theology. Within a couple of decades after the earliest Tier 1 sources, there were several objections that were pushing back, mostly beginning around AD 120 or 130.

At least the early challenges consisted chiefly of persons and groups that mostly acknowledged the more fundamental points of the Christian message—such as the deity, death, and resurrection of Jesus—but objected, sometimes strenuously, to more outlying beliefs, perhaps like eating meat offered to idols, or espoused particular versions of church government and hierarchy, and so on. Yet, probably due to their vehemence at various points, the earliest critics still often triggered the perception that they were actually enemies of the emerging Christian message or rejected the salvation of everyone else on the “other side” when, by today’s standards, they may have been roughly the equivalent of different denominations who shared a similar core message!

By the middle of the second century, however, the next wave of critics consisted largely of “professional” non-Christian philosophers and others who held far more critical positions altogether, attacking the Christian message as a whole, often from the center out. In this they were significantly different from the earlier wave of critics.

Examples here would include Justin Martyr’s Trypho the Jew (whether or not he is considered to be an actual person), whose objections are found in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho (written about AD 150–160). Origen’s antagonist Celsus wrote his famous critical work (now lost), titled On the True Doctrine, about 170–185. This work probably launched the most famous early attack against the Christianity of that day. Some would add Marcion to this group, too, writing a little earlier than Justin at about 140, but he definitely was not as vitriolic as were Trypho and Celsus. Writing in the late third century, Porphyry is sometimes thought to be an even more trenchant critic of Christianity than the others mentioned here, but to consider his ideas would move the discussion too far away from the date of the crucifixion (well over 200 years later) to be really helpful in discussing the early criticisms against Christianity.

This chapter begins by viewing some of the diversity that very skeptical scholars like to think may have existed in the mid-first century, occurring during what has been termed here the canonical period before Tier 1. This has been a huge topic for discussion and debate in recent decades. Afterward, two other waves of criticism will be considered—both the milder canonical critiques from as early as approximately AD 85 or 90 until just before the time of Marcion in 140, and then on to some representative stronger attacks on Christianity after that time, starting with Marcion and then moving later into the Tier 2 category. The goal of this chapter is to track these second-century challenges to Jesus’s death and resurrection. Detailed critiques of these views will be reserved until the later chapters that address other similar attacks on these same doctrines.

First-Century AD Diversity?

This has been one of the most intriguing topics in historical Jesus research, and one where liberal and conservative lines of demarcation are often more than obvious. More specifically, it is an area where very skeptical scholars exhibit quite divergent views from moderates, conservatives, and even from a number of liberal thinkers. It is also the area where some of the largest clashes have occurred between these researchers, though the conflict seems to have died down somewhat from where it has been. Like everyday political clashes, the interpretations of the data are often the most strained and stretched of all, since so much may ride on the outcomes of these discussions!

In recent decades, it has become apparent that a number of more skeptical commentators yearn to find alternate Christianities (and especially alternate Christologies) lurking among the teachings of the earliest church. The bottom line is often that finding such gems would then both ground the ideas themselves as well as point to a smorgasbord of equally authoritative options among which the early Christians (as well as Christians today) might choose without fear of being condemned for not taking a particular option that someone else may wish to foist upon them. The goal might be to argue that first-century Christianity was tolerant and diverse, thereby providing a paradigm for today. But a key to making these moves is to redate what are usually thought of as second-century writings to a much earlier time, often very far back into the first century. After all, this recent thesis depends on having options that rivaled the dates of the earlier canonical texts as well as the sources behind them.

As a result, quite steadily over recent decades, certain writings that are most commonly dated to the mid-second century or even later by a consensus of scholars have started being dated in more radical publications back into the first century—­sometimes almost 100 years earlier than previously dated. The reasons for these moves regularly seem to be rather arbitrary, too, as pointed out by other critical scholars. But what findings, specifically, have changed in the actual research? What are the real reasons that justify the shift to sometimes much earlier dates for these writings? Far too seldom are strong and careful arguments provided.

Another crucial and common move is maintaining that while a text may indeed be dated to the same time generally held by most other scholars, manuscript versions or portions of the text in question should now be dated many decades earlier. Often, these smaller, presumably earlier slices of a text always contain the key ideas that critics need most in order to make their arguments. This second option is capable of garnering almost all the needed results of the initial move.

The German Liberal Religionsgeschichtliche Schule

Vestiges of these teachings occurred more frequently in the late nineteenth century with the emergence of the German liberal school of thought known as the religions­geschichtliche Schule (history of religion school) movement. However, there was not as much emphasis at that time on securing hard data for the various sources that were employed, since these dates were largely unavailable. Since ascertainable dates were often impossible to obtain, there was often no clear way to decipher the very specific claims that these critics were making. They could have been, and sometimes were, citing sources that originated long after the Christian sources, all the time thinking that those sources predated the Christian materials. Therefore, in these accounts a plethora of unrelated persons, myths, and amazing stories were often lumped together in unscholarly ways, sometimes one after the other, as if there were almost automatic causal connections between them and the Christian sources, with the former texts inspiring the latter ones.

This practice may be the most apparent in one of Otto Pfleiderer’s works, where he compiled verses from the New Testament along with example after example from ancient mythology. But as mentioned, the required dating of many pagan texts here was unknown or not provided. For example, the repeated citing of Buddha’s writings, teachings, and actions were treated in a straightforward way (as in “Buddha taught” or “Buddha said”) without knowing or divulging that the texts in question had often been written literally hundreds of years after Buddha’s actual teachings or the events in his life. So how would anyone trust for sure that Buddha taught these things? Examples such as these could certainly be multiplied in the publications of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule.

Defenses of the Gospel of Thomas

Unlike the end of the nineteenth century however, the dates of these ancient materials are known far better today. But this does not impede the presence of huge amounts of recent debate over these issues. For instance, the Gospel of Thomas (discovered in Nag Hammadi in 1945) is one of the major “prizes” in these discussions, especially regarding the role it plays surrounding the early theological diversity pertaining to the first few decades after Jesus’s crucifixion. The Jesus Seminar is the chief group of scholars that favors dating the Gospel of Thomas to the first century AD, often before the composition of any of the Synoptic Gospels. In group votes, the Gospel of Thomas was placed by the Seminar at about AD 50–60, though some (even key) individuals in the Jesus Seminar opted for dates a few decades later.

A few non-Jesus Seminar members have agreed on this general date too. Helmut Koester tends to place the Gospel of Thomas in the first century, but not later than the early second century. One of the most critical scholars, Burton Mack, reports regarding the original Greek version “that scholars now date [Thomas] to the last quarter of the first century.” However, he does not even refer here to the majority position that places the book much later!

Often, the major reason for dating the Gospel of Thomas so early is that this writing with its 114 sayings seems closely related to the form of the Q text, which is also a sayings document. This plus the presence of so many sayings that parallel Q (and Mark as well) leads to the inference that the Gospel of Thomas and Q date from about the same time. Yet, most scholars think that this reason far from demonstrates this early dating thesis.

Though these moves to date the Gospel of Thomas to the first century are usually opposed, perhaps additional ideas may support these recent maneuvers to push back the date of the Gospel of Thomas from several decades to a century. One particular hypothetical idea that was initially floated almost a century ago has been noised about quite loudly ever since. It is now the most popular response in defense of an early date for the text, though it is not evidential in nature. It was claimed that in the mid-first century AD, the writings that were later adopted into the orthodox Christian canon were possibly circulated side by side with gnostic texts and other Gospels, all on fairly equal terms. From this multiplicity of diverse publications, the proto-orthodox movement emerged as the victor, but not necessarily because it taught the truth or because it was the original position of Jesus and his disciples. Rather, the orthodox members in the struggle took control of the situation by means of a political and social power grab, since they controlled the most influence and authority.

After the demise of German liberalism as a whole and the religionsgeschichtliche Schule movement in particular, the major work that served as a sort of fountainhead for this oft-repeated thesis was Walter Bauer’s volume Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum. An entire host of later publications took up a similar theme. Raymond Brown noted some of the “increasing chorus of objections” that developed over against these emerging positions, such as their simplistic positions and especially that they never answered the major question of whether the orthodox views that “won” did so because they were more faithful to Jesus’s teachings while the other positions were not.

Scholarly Criticisms against the Early Dating of the Gospel of Thomas

However, the majority of contemporary scholars by far reject the early dating of the Gospel of Thomas, due specifically to the reasons supporting the later date. The current consensus position of scholars on the original date has moved somewhat earlier from where it was a few decades ago, but it is generally dated at somewhere between the early to mid-second century AD. The mainstream view also postulates that the Gospel of Thomas clearly borrowed from the existing canonical Gospels and possibly even the letters of John and Paul.

Since a mid-second-century origin had been the more widely accepted range for both the Gospel of Thomas and many other significant texts of this general genre basically since their modern discovery, on exactly what additional grounds did the skeptics seemingly jump their date all the way back, in some cases, to approximately 100 years earlier while mentioning comparatively little evidence (and sometimes without any major confirmation at all)? Wright notes that many early Thomas dating problems often come in two species: naive and circular arguments. As examples of naive arguments, Wright cites John Dominic Crossan taking at face value the origin of the Gospel of Thomas’s own testimony according to saying 12, or Helmut Koester citing and accepting traditions regarding Matthew’s Gospel from the Gospel of Thomas’s teaching.

Another naive comment, this time from Mack, is found in his statement of gushing appreciation that the Gospel of Thomas “contains a truly amazing collection of the sayings of Jesus.” Here again, Mack’s hypercritical attitudes toward the dating of the canonical Gospel sayings are contrasted with his treatment of the often less than orthodox teachings in the noncanonical texts, which are simply and naively praised and accepted virtually at face value. But this regularly seems to be the way that much criticism proceeds. Rarely if ever are any of the nonorthodox sayings exposed to anything near the same textual intensity.

In the circular argument category, Wright places the opinions of another Jesus Seminar member, John Kloppenborg, with Helmut Koester in their comparisons and interactions between the canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas, and Q. Sometimes the Q sayings are placed in the early strata of that document because they are thought to be similar to certain sayings to the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Thomas teachings may be called early when some of its sayings are similar to those in Q. A similar example occurs when Mack claims that the Gospel of Thomas is shown to be early because its text parallels Q1 (the hypothetical division of Q into parts, largely supporting the previous views of the critics). Mack utterly takes Q’s writing and its layers for granted, failing to provide the provenance for this document, not to mention he engages in the highly controversial dividing of Q into strata!

It does not even seem to occur to Mack that though a number of passages in Q and the Gospel of Thomas may parallel each other in various ways, this by absolutely no means requires that they date from the same time! Could it not be the case that a source like the Gospel of Thomas could have borrowed from a first-century source like Q and still have been written in the second century or even later? This hap­pens repeatedly in ancient history. For example, the apostolic fathers, such as Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, widely cite unattributed words that also appear in Paul’s Epistles, but this does not mean that the works of these writers date to the 50s just like Paul’s writings.

In fact, another hint that Mack is mistaken in his Gospel of Thomas and Q early dating comparisons is that, as Wright notes, the former was never mentioned in the ancient literature until Hippolytus and Origen do so in the third century. But if the Gospel of Thomas is dated to the mid-first century AD like the canonical Gospels, and if it was as important and influential a book as some critics claim, at least for its own followers, then why would it take over a century and a half to find it cited? Given this fact, it makes more sense that the third-century citations were due to a second-century appearance of the Gospel of Thomas.

Besides these more head-to-head arguments, there is also the other major issue mentioned above, namely: what drastic change has caused some radical critics to move the date of the Gospel of Thomas 100 years earlier so quickly? This seems strongly to point to other factors. It would be an understatement to conclude that the current, very deep-seated desire to locate diversity in the theology of the earliest first-century Christian communities is presently a driving force. For whatever reasons, these scholars long for other christological options to have been available for the earliest Christians, seemingly to quell ideas like the notion that proto-orthodox, first-century Christology maintained that there was only one way to God and that Jesus was the messenger. Those who reject and even deny that this was the original teaching of Jesus and his followers need to produce data evidencing that this was not the original teaching and that other options were also originally taught by these same teachers. The Gospel of Thomas has been the most popular source for a different angle on the early Christian message, but the reasons do not line up with the strength of the claims.

Those who might conclude that the significance of such a “diversity message” has been emphasized too strongly here, or that it is not such a central concern today in critical circles that it would actually trump and even overpower scholarship, might consider the following recommendation in the pages of a recently released book by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger entitled The Heresy of Orthodoxy. In a rather exceptionally scornful response regarding early dating of the Gospel of Thomas, well-known scholar D. A. Carson quips brilliantly:

In the beginning was Diversity. And the Diversity was with God, and the Diversity was God. Without Diversity was nothing made that was made. And it came to pass that nasty old “orthodox” people narrowed down Diversity and finally squeezed it out, dismissing it as heresy. But in the fullness of time (which is, of course, our time), Diversity rose up and smote orthodoxy hip and thigh. Now, praise be, the only heresy is orthodoxy. As widely and as unthinkingly accepted as this reconstruction is, it is historical nonsense: the emperor has no clothes.

This comment is followed by Carson’s final line, thanking the two authors of the book for “patiently, carefully, and politely exposing this shameful nakedness for what it is.”

It is absolutely crucial to remember here too that the question at hand is not whether today’s scholars would actually prefer diversity and toleration over a single, uniform, and rather exclusive message. Rather, the question in view is which position was taught by Jesus and his disciples. That is the subject that is being debated here—the main historical issue. But in attempting to decipher this latter question, some have allowed the common and contemporary issues of diversity and tolerance to assume the leading roles and have permitted the horses to pull the cart instead of asking the straightforward historical questions that they actually claim to be seeking. It must be remembered too that if the original teaching of Jesus and his disciples had been diversity and toleration, that message is most likely what moderates and conservatives would be proclaiming as the main idea.

What makes these recent radical moves even more frustrating and so disappointingly hypocritical is that the Jesus Seminar, representing the largest group of scholars pushing in this direction, has taken great pains to make many statements that clearly cloud the issues. For example, they have warned repeatedly against any sort of prejudice and its potential detrimental role in research, heavily criticizing other groups that they find offensive. Yet, they also claim to be “neutral observers” (!) in their work. Most amusingly, they warn about discovering a Jesus in our own research who looks too much like ourselves! But then, in their seeming prejudgments, they attempt to rule out by fiat (perhaps because they do not have the evidence on their side to do otherwise?) the apparently despised positions that bother them so much.

Back to Carson, Köstenberger, and Kruger: if they are correct in their own assessments of these topics, then there is a decided lack of evidence here for touting any of the gnostic or proto-gnostic writings and taking them from the second century back into the first century. It appears to be more like the earlier-mentioned, much-desired thesis in search of support. As such, it may be more like the maxim that if someone states something enough times, even without confirming data (as here), not only will it be believed, but the supporting “evidence” will appear soon enough. Yet, these three scholars are far from the only ones who think that there is a dearth of evidence for the early dating of the Gospel of Thomas.

Other recommendations issued by major scholars regarding the work by Köstenberger and Kruger were also forthcoming. Nicolas Perrin warned that the historical evidence fails to favor this recent view and instead supports the rival orthodox view. Daniel Wallace advised against giving in to “the siren song of postmodern relativism and tolerance.” D. Jeffrey Bingham referred to the diversity and toleration thesis as one that “long ago should have been buried.”

Still other prominent New Testament specialists have chimed in similarly. Referring repeatedly to what he prefers to call the “Q-and-Thomas thesis,” Wright asserts regarding Mack’s version of the hypothesis in particular that there is “no real evidence for it whatsoever.” Rather, it is all “an exercise in creative imagination. We just do not have the evidence to be able to postulate with any hope of accuracy.” Then he includes Koester along with Mack and notes that they are so sure of their views in spite of their doing so “without any basis in actual evidence.” Then Wright adds that since Mack’s thesis is a historical one, it needs to be judged on those grounds. But “by those canons, it fails.”

It is plainly the case that for Wright, perhaps the chief criticism of the “Q-and-Thomas thesis” remains a straightforward one: it clearly lacks any noteworthy evidence from which the hypothesis might be investigated and evaluated. As Wright summarizes some major issues regarding Mack’s thesis, “It does not do justice to the data: it chops up texts with cheerful abandon and relocates them all over the place, radically misreading first-century Judaism and completely marginalizing the theology and religion of Paul—which is the one body of literature we not only actually possess but which we know for certain was produced within thirty years of the crucifixion.”

Elaine Pagels’s volume The Gnostic Gospels is another example of scholarship that makes some similar claims supposing the idea that the proto-orthodox Gospels and the proto-gnostic Gospels simply circulated together, welcoming readers to espouse many of these radically different beliefs basically as they chose to do so. But many reviewers responded to her work by pointing out, similarly to the scholars above, that the facts indicate that these two groups of writings simply were not on equal footing. That the canonical Gospels certainly appear to have been written decades earlier or even more is at least a preliminary indication that these four writings could possibly also be more authoritative.

O. C. Edwards has agreed with these latter critical comments. Speaking in particular of Pagels’s thesis, he asserts: “It is precisely as history that I find her work most unsatisfactory. Nowhere, for instance, does she give the impression that the basic picture of Jesus given in the New Testament gospels did not arise contemporaneously with the Gnostic portrait, but antedated it by at least half a century. As historical reconstructions there is no way that the two can claim equal credentials.” Eminent New Testament scholar Joseph A. Fitzmyer responded in similar fashion: “Time and time again, [Pagels] is blind to the fact that she is ignoring a good century of Christian existence in which those ‘Gnostic Christians’ were simply not around.” This straightforward indictment is certainly brief and directed to the same general point as the others. Another prominent participant in these dialogues who even appreciates some of Pagels’s work, Pheme Perkins, still asserts that “Pagels either knows or cares too little about the theological diversity and development of ‘orthodox’ Christian theology in the first three centuries to be fair to its defenders in their debates with the gnostics. She is frequently taken in by the stock rhetorical polemics of both sides, mistaking rhetoric for fact.”

Edwards also charges that Pagels’s text is plagued by a reductionism for which no evidence is provided beyond only her own words. Perkins summarizes her critique this way: “The whole is so flawed by hasty generalization, over-interpretation of texts to fit a pre-determined scheme, and lack of sympathetic balance that this reviewer found herself constantly wishing that the whole could have been redone with more care.” Other issues raised regarding Pagels’s thesis include her popularizing methodology; her constant imposition of modern political, sociological, and psychological factors on ancient philosophical and theological questions where they do not belong; and the apparent frustration with the lack of her desired support for woman’s rights not being found in the gnostic sources.

Overall, Brown judges regarding the Gospel of Thomas that “we learn not a single verifiable new fact about Jesus’s ministry and only a few new sayings that might plausibly have been his.” Fitzmyer agrees but is even stronger in his assertions: “The Coptic texts of Nag Hammadi tell us little that is new. . . . It has been mystifying, indeed, why serious scholars continue to talk about the pertinence of this material to the study of the New Testament.” Several unifying theses occur repeatedly.

The combined theses of the more radical scholars such as Pagels, Koester, Funk, Mack, and Robinson, along with some other members of the Jesus Seminar, have failed to convince the vast majority of their scholarly colleagues across the spectrum of views. But again, this point must not be missed here: it is decidedly not the influential scholarly names lining up against these gnostic theories, but the absence of any solid, determining evidence that favors these positions in any clear sense. The arguments against the skeptics have continued to mount, while a great many of their critics unite in remarking that their theses were bereft of the necessary supporting data, as seen above. As William Farmer comments, “We can only conclude that a hypothesis is being set forth for which there is very little evidence.” As a result, and reminiscent of Wright’s earlier “creative imagination” statement, Farmer concludes that when the Gospel of Thomas and Q are handled in the manner of their supporters, then the result is only revealed as “a grand vision . . . a romance.”

So as the dust settles from the scholarly debate chiefly on the Gospel of Thomas, there remain convincing and even dominant reasons for dating it as a second-­century document, like other, similar writings that are most commonly dated to the mid-second century. This is the consensus position according to a dominant number of commentators, including moderate, conservative, and even some liberal scholars. In fact, in probably the most scholarly volume on the Gospel of Thomas to date (over 700 pages in length), Simon Gathercole also decides for a second-century date. In this in-depth study, Gathercole argues for the Gospel of Thomas’s dependence on at least two canonical Gospels along with other New Testament books. Other scholarly volumes have consistently drawn the same or similar conclusions.

As mentioned, these consensus critical views rest on a plethora of intricate studies leading to closely argued positions and conclusions. Unlike the first-century Gospel of Thomas option held by the Jesus Seminar and a comparatively small number of other scholars, several arguments have already been mentioned here in favor of the second-century position. These include the Gospel of Thomas’s seeming knowledge of and reliance upon two (and perhaps even all three) of the Synoptic Gospels plus other New Testament books. Further, some of the ideas in the Gospel of Thomas along with similar proto-gnostic ideas were absent during the first two or three decades after the crucifixion, but with the same ideas being quite similar to other writings from the mid-second century onward. Moreover, it has already been mentioned that the Gospel of Thomas is never quoted or cited in the early literature until the third century. These last arguments are quite damaging to the early dating thesis.

The scholarly citations above contained more than just the final evaluative verdicts themselves. Beyond the latter critiques just mentioned, there were also at least five more specific critiques that need to be unpacked and addressed by the skeptics. One recurring theme from among the respondents above was that the proto-­orthodox texts were simply much earlier, up to a half century or more. Another argument that strongly favors the priority of the canonical texts is that these writings have much stronger and more solid claims to being dated earlier. Moreover, the canonical works were more authoritative in that they had much closer connections to Jesus’s apostles. Further, the New Testament canon was decided much earlier than normally thought (without the pro-gnostic writings, perhaps arguing that they were not yet widely known, as already mentioned). Last, the centrality of Jesus’s death and resurrection (see below on this), admitted by virtually all critical scholars, also argues in the direction of the canonical texts over the dissenting direction preferred by the proto-gnostic works.

One last absolutely crucial item must be mentioned here. Even if it were the case that the Gospel of Thomas belonged back in the mid-first century, this does not at all disprove or challenge the historical events of Jesus’s death and resurrection. The reason for this conclusion is quite straightforward: the Gospel of Thomas does not dispute either event, but the text teaches or implies both events several times. Jesus’s death is predicted, implied, or mentioned (Gos. Thom. 12, 55, 65), as is the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus (Gos. Thom. prologue, 59, 66, 71, 111). These events are hinted at in ways that seem to indicate that knowledge of the Gospel narratives lies behind the mere mentions of items such as Jesus having to depart from his disciples (Gos. Thom. 12) or Jesus’s teaching that his hearers should take up their crosses and follow him (Gos. Thom. 55). In particular, the parable of the master’s son being killed (Gos. Thom. 65; cf. Mark 12:1–12) especially points in this direction of further behind-the-scenes teachings of Jesus’s death.

The very next saying notes that the stone that was rejected by builders became the cornerstone (Gos. Thom. 66), thereby pointing to Jesus being exalted after his death. In Gos. Thom. 71, Jesus appears to be saying that while he will be raised and exalted (as per Gos. Thom. 66), it will not be his physical body that will be raised. So while the mode of Jesus’s appearances presumably might have been a matter for dispute between the Gospel of Thomas and other Christians, had the former spelled out these views further, there would not be a disagreement over the fact that Jesus had actually been raised from the dead.

The Q Document and Resurrection Teachings

The other presumed document that is so often paired with the Gospel of Thomas, in that both consist of a list of sayings of Jesus, is the so-called Q document, taken from the German term Quelle (Source). Whether or not there actually was such a document is of no concern here, though it has never been discovered in whole or in part. Q is referred to as the document that stands behind the sayings of Jesus in Matthew and Luke that are not found in Mark. That is also how it will be referred to here. The overall question pertains to whether or not Q contributes to or subtracts from the teaching of Jesus’s resurrection.

For the record, there is more dispute today about the existence of an actual Q document than at any other time in this century. A second issue concerns whether Q can be subdivided into layers or editions, three of which are most prominently discussed. On the first question, Marcus Borg reports that probably 90 percent of recent scholars accept its existence, so it is a very popular thesis. However, he realizes that many scholars have trouble with the claim that Q can be accurately divided into layers.

Pertaining to the date of the Q document, the terminus ad quem would have to be locked in before the composition of Matthew, which employed this text and is usually placed by critical scholars at about AD 80. For these researchers, Q would have to have been in existence by perhaps AD 50–60. For those who date Matthew’s authorship some twenty years earlier (a popular but not predominant date), then Q would have to date much earlier still. The Jesus Seminar dates Q to about 50–60.

Here again, it must be remembered that, like the Gospel of Thomas, Q is by no means a problem for Christianity. That should be even more obvious in this case, given that since there are no manuscript copies of Q, what is known to be in the hypothetical text is held in common with Matthew and Luke, and that is hardly troublesome in that it is already part of the canon.

The Q texts used in Matthew and Luke cite miracles and exorcisms by Jesus. Another Q passage records the Jewish leader’s question about receiving a sign, which precipitated Jesus’s comment concerning the sign of Jonah along with a rebuke. The reproach was probably given due to Jesus’s sense earlier in the same context that the leaders would not have believed even if they had personally seen an appearance from someone who had been raised from the dead, similar to Jesus’s comment in Luke 16:30–31. After all, when Jesus healed a possessed man not long before, the Pharisees responded that Jesus did so by the power of Beelzebul (or Beelzebub; Matt 12:22–24; Luke 11:14–15), rather than admitting a miracle from God. What would keep the leaders from responding similarly again?

Most likely, even without Luke including the portion of the comment on the Son of Man spending three days and nights in the heart of the earth, there are several reasons why the Q reference here seems most likely to be referring to Jesus’s resurrection. As I. Howard Marshall has crucially remarked, the word picture would conjure up for Jewish ears the notion of Jonah’s “miraculous deliverance from death.” Further, the similar text later in Luke 16:30–31 points in this direction by mentioning the resurrection as well. Last, Matthew may be even closer to the original Q reading, with Luke simply deleting a few words. At the very least, this was clearly Matthew’s personal interpretation of this text’s meaning.

Needless to say, on the surface at least, these reports of miracles and an exorcism probably pointing to Jesus’s resurrection in Q hardly militates against anything in the New Testament. This is especially the case with the last point in particular, assuming it is concluded that Q was affirming Jesus’s resurrection. By virtue of the three days and nights reference, Matthew has “unpacked” what he considered to be the obvious meaning here.

Brief Excursus: Are Jesus’s Death and Resurrection Central in the Gospel of Thomas and Q?

Before leaving the topics of the Gospel of Thomas and Q, an important side theme needs to be mentioned. The discussion of the Gospel of Thomas above may indicate that Jesus’s death and resurrection may potentially be more prominent than is often thought. It has been noted that the Gospel of Thomas may mention or imply the death of Jesus at least three times and the resurrection about five times. Further and more crucially, what about the many commentators who think that “the living Jesus” in the Gospel of Thomas prologue (or “the Living One” of Gos. Thom. 59, 111, cf. 52b) either is or could possibly be the resurrected, currently living Jesus? If they correctly decipher the Gospel of Thomas’s meaning here, then arguably the entire book can be crafted from the standpoint of this opening text, meaning that the resurrection of Jesus marks the very center of the Gospel of Thomas as well, since the resurrected and living Jesus would be the source and purveyor of the book’s wisdom. Robert M. Grant suggests that the opening text may be precisely why the Gospel of Thomas devotes comparatively little attention to Jesus’s life and death.

The question regarding Q appears to be even more straightforward. The Q text is incomplete; thus, scholars do not possess these actual sayings in their entirety. Basically, only the portions that appear in both Matthew and Luke but not in Mark can be evaluated for sure. Given that fact, how can it possibly be known how the docu­ment begins and ends, or the content of the additional material? The text’s overall theme and purpose are unknown, except to record various sayings of Jesus. So how can the content of the remaining portions of Q be ascertained by guessing?

The comments in the notes above concerning James Robinson and other scholars could be helpful here. If the living Jesus (especially if he is resurrected) begins and frames the Gospel of Thomas, Q, and any other possible sayings texts, whether or not they were composed during the same period, then this could provide some potential answers regarding these questions as to why the resurrection may be less prominent.

Working further in the direction of the brief survey above, there are a few key texts in Q that do speak of Jesus’s miracles, an exorcism, and the “sign of the prophet Jonah” and its probable reference to both Jesus’s death and resurrection. So, while there are not enough data to answer just how much more of a role these supernatural topics may have played in this collection, it is unknown whether they were further encouraged, avoided, or denied. In the absence of all these potential questions, it seems virtually impossible to ascertain whether the death and resurrection of Jesus were central themes in Q. That certainly could be the case, but it cannot be asserted with confidence.

Thus, when various commentators make their seemingly offhanded remarks (sometimes even appearing to hope or wish that this were the case) that Jesus’s death and resurrection are not central in the Gospel of Thomas and Q, upon what are such comments based? If all anyone knew was that the Gospel of Thomas begins with what may purportedly be the words of the living Jesus and that the Q material is likely to be only a portion of these teachings of Jesus, these facts alone should keep anyone from being secure in their comments that Jesus’s death and resurrection are not central in these sources. Therefore, based on these known factors alone, it would appear that such doubts regarding these two sources amount to whistling in the dark—it is simply unknown at present. Regardless, these subjects were not absent from Q and the Gospel of Thomas. As stated by New Testament specialist Reginald H. Fuller concerning Q, “So although the Q material does not contain the kerygma of the resurrection it presupposes it all the way through.”

Another suggested potential first-century source often accepted by recent critical scholars should be mentioned here too. Often called the Miracles Source, it seems to have been employed at least in the Gospels of John and Mark and is usually dated to about the same time as Q: in the 50s, according to the Jesus Seminar. Though there are other ways to explain the data, the usually cited evidence for the presence of this source is that John states that changing water to wine in 2:11 was Jesus’s first public miracle, while later identifying Jesus’s healing of the official’s son as his second miracle (4:54). Further, Crossan notes that the total of seven miracle stories in John 2–9 have Markan parallels in the same order (chiefly in Mark 2, 6, 8). Many contemporary scholars conclude that John and perhaps Mark were thus employing a previously tabulated list of Jesus’s miracles.

None of the sources dated to approximately AD 100 conflict with the canonical New Testament teachings regarding the facticity of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Rather, these events were known and affirmed during this period. Alternate interpretations occurred here or there, as with the Gospel of Thomas possibly holding the view that Jesus appeared with glorified, nonbodily manifestations (even when the early-dating option is accepted, which seems most likely to be mistaken, as just argued in detail). But there were no assured factual denials or challenges to the historical events of the death and resurrection during this early time.

The other question posed in this section was answered in the affirmative, namely, that there were certainly a number of items over which there was a diversity of views in this early New Testament period—in theological, ethical, political, and social areas. The New Testament itself is a witness to this conclusion, as Romans 14 sets forth clearly. Paul did not just choose some “ho-hum” areas of discussion in this passage either. He raises questions concerning two of the toughest issues of all in the early church—a theological argument drawn from the Ten Commandments regarding the specific day on which believers should worship and the ethical issue of eating meat that had been offered to idols. Of course, even more diversity of views exists between believers today. But in this earliest period, the historical facts of Jesus’s death by crucifixion and his resurrection were not the targets of the disputes.

Diversity in the Tier 1 Texts (AD 100–150)

By the close of the earlier canonical period, there were differences of opinion within the early church, though none that denied major doctrines or historical events. However, this minor diversity grew steadily in the decades ahead.

At the Close of the Canonical Period

In an intriguing volume that emerged chiefly from the Sprunt Lectures given at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, in January 1980, New Testament specialist Raymond Brown developed a thesis regarding the Christian diversity of beliefs that occurred after the death of the apostles during the last third of the first century. For Brown, orthodox theology extended back to Jesus, whose teachings were the very center of Christian doctrine, especially regarding the belief in Jesus’s death and resurrection.

At the close of the canonical period, a number of noticeable differences began to emerge. Noting chiefly the exception of Paul’s “undisputed letters,” Brown states that most of the remainder of the New Testament books were written during this “sub-apostolic” window. He then proceeds to summarize these differences according to the communities represented by groups of New Testament books, such as the Pastoral Epistles, Colossians and Ephesians, Luke-Acts, the Petrine Epistles, the Johannine tradition including the Epistles, and Matthew. However, the differences that he notes between these communities are usually remarkably small and not fundamental.

For example, for Brown the Pastoral Epistles hold different views on the place of women in the church. Colossians and Ephesians reveal contrasts regarding ecclesiology and especially different perspectives on Judaism. Luke-Acts diverges from Ephesians and Colossians on concepts of the church and perhaps on the nature of fellowship. Johannine Christology is the highest among the Gospels, being the only Gospel teaching of preexistence, again according to Brown. Also, John’s realized eschatology is contrasted with the more traditional, futuristic eschatologies. The writer of Hebrews has a very high Christology, like John and Paul, and shares some other similarities with Paul too, but with a totally different style. Hebrews also places more emphasis on various aspects of Jesus’s true humanity as well as gives a “radical critique” to the “Israelite cult” of Judaism. Brown also comments on 1 Peter (on which he takes what he terms the majority view that it was written by a Petrine disciple), James, Matthew, and Mark, emphasizing each of their distinctives.

In conclusion, Brown pronounces that “we have found a remarkable sub-­apostolic variety of thought” in the last third of the first century. Then he adds, “By the time of the death of the apostles, the churches were already breaking away from much of what previously constituted authority in Judaism.”

Therefore, Brown thinks that there are two mistaken extreme positions to avoid here. He objects to both the conservative view that holds that everything existed in perfect harmony at the end of the first century, as well as the liberal view that sometimes postulates that most items were in flux almost with a theological smorgasbord from which to choose. Brown argues that “no one can show” that these first-­century churches actually broke koinōnia or communion over the competing ideas that existed from time to time. The bottom line is that “we would make a bad mistake not to recognize that a strong insistence on sound doctrine is both a NT idea and a strength in the Christian picture.”

The main issue with Brown’s reconstruction seems to be that for many scholars on both sides of the conservative-liberal spectrum, to utilize the word “diversity” for the sorts of differences that Brown describes in this book is simply not a fair usage of that term. It sometimes conveys the sense of “discovering” conflict or even serious differences where there is actually very little. As commented earlier in this chapter, the differences that Brown describes all seem like quite normal differentiations of the milder sort. To use the earlier analogy, these differences that existed appear to be more like the contents of the multiple-views books that are currently so popular with modern Christian readers. In fact, many of the actual issues at the close of the first century do not even seem as major as many of those contrasted in these multiple-view books of today!

In other words, the differences cited above by Brown seem to involve Christian communities that hold the same or very similar underlying doctrine, especially in the theological center, with largely outlying differences in noncrucial areas. These kinds of differences seem more like the sorts of disagreements that might exist between two churches in the same town without believers missing a beat between congregations. For example, few of these differences in certain lesser subjects should ruffle many feathers today. Thus, if this is the extent of much of the diversity that was present by AD 110 or 120, the overall view would indeed appear to be more monolithic in nature—the sorts of beliefs that cause even believers to shrug their shoulders and keep walking!

However, by the early decades of the second century some of the dividing points led to much more diversity. Perhaps even as soon as the late first century, some more serious kinds of multiplicity began to emerge. One such example is the Gospel of the Hebrews, which is no longer fully extant though parts of it appear in patristic citations and in a few fragments. Crossan dates this writing to the 50s in Egypt, though without producing any arguments for that date. He comments that the Gospel of the Hebrews accepted “the preexistence, advent, sayings, and resurrection appearances of Jesus as the incarnation of the divine wisdom.”

On the other hand, in a more technical treatment, Philipp Vielhauer and Georg Strecker date the same work well over a half century later, to the first portion of the second century. According to Koester, the content and style of this Gospel were similar to the Synoptic Gospels, and “this work contains a resurrection story in which Jesus appeared to his brother James and broke bread with him.” Whether Crossan or Vielhauer and Strecker are closer to being correct about the date, the testimony in the Gospel of the Hebrews would still be in an early enough position to provide some possibly important details about Jesus’s postresurrection visit to his brother James, which is not described in the New Testament.

On the one hand, though so little is known regarding it, the Gospel of the Hebrews is often (generally) viewed and treated well among Christian writers, both in the second century and onward. However, some negative comments also appear here and there, often surrounding the overall topic that the Gospel of the Hebrews is actually proto-gnostic in nature and seems to have denied certain key doctrines from that theological angle. This entire plethora of potential issues is apparent though difficult to decipher, especially when there is no real document to pick up and study. The differences in the two dates make a huge difference as well.

Regarding a small group of other so-called Hebrew Gospels, the Gospel of the Nazareans may have been written in Aramaic as a translation of part or all of the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of the Ebionites was another member of this group of texts, with the distinction that it may have combined the three Synoptic Gospels into a fuller account of Jesus’s life. Regarding these works, there are differences of opinion as to whether Jesus was viewed strictly from the Jewish perspective as a prophet and the Messiah but not as born of a virgin or as deity. Of these more Jewish writings, the Gospel of the Ebionites may possibly have been the most opposed to certain Christian doctrines.

These often similarly grouped “Hebrew Gospels” viewed Christianity through Jewish lenses and were in circulation during the second century. But Crossan lists the Gospel of the Nazareans and the Gospel of the Ebionites as not being written until about the midpoint of the second century or a little later than the Gospel of the Hebrews.

The situation here is further complicated by a number of difficult factors. To start, commentators’ statements regarding these texts are occasionally divergent and conflict with one another, probably due largely to the absence of much or even most of the information from texts that are missing. It also depends on the particular distinctions and deductions the researcher makes, including questions concerning whether the same book is being addressed, since the original, proper names are not known with regard to one or two of these texts. The writings are sometimes identified by different titles, with quite divergent dates being assigned to the same writing and with large percentages of missing manuscripts and manuscript portions (such as having no extant manuscripts of the Gospel of the Hebrews beyond several tiny bits). As a result, apparent commentator confusion should hardly be a surprise but rather expected.

Due to issues like these, having at least identified some texts and addressed the subject briefly, this will be the extent of any further attempts to parse out the historical specifics of these mentions of the “Hebrew Gospels.” Suffice it to say, however, that there were probably some early gnostic overtones here, such as the extent and various ways in which Jesus was thought to actually have possessed a human body. Then there were the Jewish writings with implications such as whether Jesus was actually divine in some sense or rather just a Jewish prophet. At these points, larger and more crucial theological differences were emerging.

Marcion

Living around the close of the early Tier 1 period, Marcion was probably the most influential of the postcanonical critical figures. Though he had been raised in a family that held orthodox Christian beliefs, he developed an intriguing combination of views that would have placed him in between the outlooks of the Hebrew Gospels just surveyed, which he would have opposed in large part, and early proto-gnostic positions of the docetic variety, though without going all the way over to their later positions. He was excommunicated from the church for his views in 144.

Marcion concluded that the Being who created the world and was depicted in the Old Testament was neither the righteous nor the redeemer “high” God of the universe. Though none of his writings are extant, he reportedly concluded in his work Antitheses that this creator who had chosen the Jews as his people was capricious and performed evil acts, including being self-contradictory. On the other hand, Jesus was not born as a child but simply appeared on the first-century scene (which would seem to eliminate the virgin birth as well), ministered, appeared to be human (but was not), appeared to have suffered and died on the cross (but did not actually die), and later appeared once again to his followers. Paul was a hero to Marcion, restoring the original gospel that Jesus’s disciples tended to drag back in the direction of Judaism, especially legalism.

Marcion’s standard is often said to be the first effort to set forth a New Testament canon. It consisted of an edited version of Luke’s Gospel (expunging Luke’s first two chapters due to Jesus not being born in a human body, for example) along with ten of Paul’s Epistles (but even here with some editing, and with the Pastoral Epistles being exempted), all of them fashioned according to Marcion’s theological preferences. It was thought that various interpolations had crept into these texts angled toward Jewish perspectives. Therefore, Marcion had to ensure that these writings remained “pure,” hence the need for his editing. It is true that groupings of New Testament books such as the Gospels, Acts, and Paul’s Epistles had at least generally been recognized as Scripture for some time before Marcion. But at the least, Marcion’s efforts probably spurred forward several of the serious orthodox attempts to arrive at an official or semiofficial canon, such as the efforts that were exerted by the likes of Irenaeus, Tatian, and probably the Muratorian Canon itself.

Specifically regarding the central doctrine of the death and resurrection of Jesus, again, Marcion’s Jesus never truly had a human body or really died, thus he was not strictly raised from the dead. Marcion did not question Jesus’s appearances per se, agreeing that Jesus was seen by his followers after the crucifixion event had occurred, though the latter did not result in Jesus’s death. So, Jesus not actually dying was a major factor for the church, denying the soteriological aspect of that event on the New Testament view. Further, though it is difficult to be exact without having his writings before us, the extent to which Marcion leaned toward gnostic views may also have had a bearing on his view of whether Jesus truly appeared bodily to his followers. In the latter case, though the appearances actually occurred, their form and interpretation also differed substantially. At the very least, in Marcion’s case, Jesus’s “appearances” that were not preceded by his death were not resurrection appearances at all!

To summarize this section, the canonical texts (up to approximately AD 100) saw very few if any serious disagreements among each other in what might be called central, fundamental areas of Christian theology. As argued by Brown, fellowship and communion were not broken over the differences. Early Tier 1 texts more or less followed the lead of the canonical writings without major theological issues. But beginning approximately with the writings produced around 140, the serious questioning intensified in several of these fundamental areas, particularly between the beliefs that proto-gnostics or gnostics held over against the ones held by the proto-orthodox or orthodox believers. These included questions of whether Jesus was actually a human being and had an actual body, the virgin birth, if it was Jesus himself who died at the event of the crucifixion, and if Jesus rose bodily from the dead, if indeed he was crucified. These crucial subjects were working their way to confrontation in the church.

Diversity in the Tier 2 Texts (AD 150–200)

It was noted earlier that some historical Jesus researchers continue to examine sources dated past the AD 150 mark, approximately 120 years after Jesus’s crucifixion. They variously also include sources such as Lucian, Celsus, a few later gnostic writers, or even the Jewish Mishnah. Due to the importance of some of these writings, viewing some of the historical objections to Christianity during this period up to about 180 or so may be helpful. Again, the Mishnah, for example, will not be included due to its late date, even with its earlier traditions. Nor will Lucian, who was treated in volume 1 of this study, and who freely and heartily criticized the believers in his day for being gullible, without really leveling any historical complaints. Celsus, who did offer very serious objections, will occupy most of the space in this section.

The Gospel of Peter

A fragment of this writing was the first noncanonical gospel to be discovered. It was found in Egypt just six miles from the site of the Nag Hammadi gnostic texts by French archaeologist Urbain Bouriant in the mid-1880s. The text was divided into fourteen chapters of sixty total verses. This particular fragment is dated much later than the presumed original date of the work and may point to its popularity in the church, though this is undetermined. The original composition is generally placed in the second century AD, often in the latter half of this period, though occasionally dated earlier. One of the chief reasons for this particular date is the mention of the writing by Bishop Serapion of Antioch (199–211) and an even later citation by Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 3.3.2; 6.12). The possibility of an earlier pre-Serapion existence for the text has not been established.

A potential question is whether this present text is totally or substantially the same Gospel of Peter as the one known to these ancient Christian writers. At least until more manuscripts are found for comparison, scholars seem satisfied that they represent the same text. At any rate, the obvious benefit from the discovery is any value that may be derived from the text itself. Rather understandably, the authorship is never assigned to the apostle Peter, in spite of this identification (Gos. Pet. 15.60).

Another area of scholarly interest concerns whether any material from this Gospel manifests gnostic influences. Researchers often assert that it exhibits docetic tendencies, though N. T. Wright denies the presence of gnostic teachings. Those who support the former view, such as Bishop Serapion, point to items such as Jesus apparently feeling no pain during his crucifixion (Gos. Pet. 4.11), the difficulty in determining if Jesus had died before his exit from the cross since “he was taken up” in his final moments (5.19), and the lack of bodily appearances.

Regarding the appearances, however, a wounded Jesus was viewed by many onlookers as he was assisted out of the tomb (Gos. Pet. 10.39–42) and the fragmented account of a fishing scene at the very end of the story (15.58–60) is reminiscent of the disciples in John 21, just before seeing the resurrected Jesus. Further, the lack of other appearances is less significant due to the missing beginning and ending of the fragment, hence the question of additional appearances is somewhat open. Serapion, Jerome, and Pope Gelasius all condemned the writing.

Many have also mentioned certain anti-Jewish sentiments in the fragment, such as Pilate being exonerated while Herod and the Jews are blamed for Jesus’s crucifixion and death. The text opens with Herod and the Jews being unwilling to wash their hands of the situation, and Herod condemning Jesus to death instead of Pilate (Gos. Pet. 1.1–2). Though less weighty due to the matter of silence, there are also no references to Old Testament precedent. After the crucifixion, the Jews were sorrowful and conceded that Jesus was righteous (7.25; 8.28–29).

The question of the Gospel of Peter’s sources and their dates is an area of pointed scholarly dispute, one that potentially has a bearing on issues regarding early Christian proclamation. Johnston points out that it is chiefly the Jesus Seminar proponents and related scholars who argue the highly controversial idea that the Gospel of Peter is “the oldest independent source for the passion narrative” in the Gospels! For John Dominic Crossan, for example, it is the conjectural “Cross Gospel” that is the proposed source thought to reside within Peter.

M. R. James asserted that the Gospel of Peter drew from all four of the canonical Gospels, though this is not heard as frequently today. Raymond Brown pointed out that while there is an independent story about the soldiers at Jesus’s tomb in Gos. Pet. 8.28–11.49, the Gospel of Peter obviously knows Matthew’s account of the guards at the tomb, including details like the sealing of the burial stone and the soldiers being forbidden to speak about what happened. But the guards were not paid as in Matthew. It could be added that the fishing scene in the final paragraph of the Gospel of Peter is fairly similar to the one in John 21:1–3 as well.

This information is crucial, for if Brown is correct that the Gospel of Peter used and hence was written after Matthew, according to the predominant critical dating, then at a bare minimum that would place the Gospel of Peter no earlier than the very end of the first century or into the second century. It would also date the Gospel of Peter post-Mark and probably post-Luke or even John, especially given the fishing scene.

Further, Johnston lists several traits that point to a second- or even a third-­century date, including such later elements as the regular use of the “Lord’s Day,” the lack of knowledge of Jewish customs, blaming the Jews for Jesus’s death, multiplying the number of resurrection witnesses at the tomb, the mythical-sounding and gigantic size of the angels and an even taller Jesus, the descent into hell, and the talking cross. To this summary may be added that the Gospel of Peter names the crucifixion centurion as Petronius (8.31). Accordingly, J. K. Elliott states that the general scholarly conclusion is that the Gospel of Peter “is secondary to, and dependent on, the accounts of the passion in the canonical gospels.”

The Gospel of Peter fragment begins with Jesus’s sentencing without prior details of a potential religious or political trial. Herod takes the lead in the proceedings and sentences Jesus to die. Jesus is crowned with thorns, beaten, and crucified between two other men, with a sign placed overhead proclaiming him as the King of Israel (3.6–4.12). Jesus’s oppressors gamble for his garments, and one of the other crucified men defends him. But Jesus’s ankles are not broken so that he suffers more than the others (4.12–14). Jesus calls out to his Father (“My power, my power”) before “he was taken up” (5.19). After the temple veil is torn in two and an earthquake occurs, Joseph takes Jesus’s body and buries it (5.20–6.22).

Next, the Jewish leaders beseech Pilate to provide a Roman guard for Jesus’s tomb, which is granted. The centurion Petronius and a group of soldiers seal the stone covering the tomb with seven seals and set up camp nearby (8.29–33). A multitude of people come to the tomb and, along with the soldiers, watch as “a great light” accompanies two shining men as they come down from heaven and enter the tomb after the stone rolls away by itself (9.34–10.38).

The soldiers and the chief priests, who are also present, all witness these events. The two men who entered the tomb return, supporting a third man. The heads of the first two rise up to heaven, though the head of the third person who was supported as he emerged from the tomb rises above the heavens. The men are followed by a cross that also appears from the tomb. A voice from heaven asks the cross if it had preached to the dead, and the cross answers affirmatively (10.38–42). The men at the tomb then go to Pilate and tell him what they saw. Pilate charges the soldiers not to tell anyone (11.43–49).

Next, early on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and other women come to the tomb to complete the burial process. Concerned about the size of the stone in front of the tomb, they arrive and find the tomb open and the stone rolled away. A young man in dazzling clothing sitting inside the tomb informs them that Jesus has risen from the dead and has already left the tomb. Frightened, they ran away (12.50–13.57).

The fragment ends at this point after a final comment concerning the twelve disciples (three of whom are singled out and mentioned by name: Peter, Andrew, and Levi), who were grieving over their recent loss. Apparently, they left Jerusalem to return home and heard nothing from the women, so the men decide to go fishing. But the manuscript breaks off mid-sentence (14.58–60) and it is unknown what else may have been included in the original text, such as whether or not Jesus appeared to his followers and, if so, what form the appearances may have taken.

Commentators have noted that the extant portion of the Gospel of Peter fragment is largely in harmony with that of the canonical Gospels, including Jesus’s condemnation to death for no specific crime, the crown of thorns and beating, the crucifixion between two other men, and the “King of the Jews” sign, among other shared features. As Johnston states, Peter exhibits “a greater resonance with the canonical gospels than it does when compared with the wider spectrum of extra-canonical writings.” However, some of the reports featured in the Gospel of Peter differ from the canonical Gospels as well, such as Herod issuing Jesus’s chief condemnation, the massive angels, and the talking cross, among several other features. Overall, the familiar elements in the Gospel of Peter outnumber the surprises, though some of those “wonders” are rather substantial. Johnston sums up these features here as “a walking and talking cross, conspiratorial cover-ups and pay-offs, graphic polymorphic anatomical changes, hostile witnesses with specific sensory details, and an increased attention upon the miraculous.”

Additionally, depending on how the verses are counted, the resurrection narrative in the Gospel of Peter is one of the longest among early church texts. It is also the only account where the witnesses actually watch as the resurrection event unfolds before them, with Jesus being accompanied by the angels as they exit the tomb.

Regarding the question of historicity, the Gospel of Peter is not a very exceptional minefield. In a few cases, it may just possibly add its voice as an independent source. For the minority of scholars who date the text early, such as the Jesus Seminar, it could possibly date back to the late first century. Ehrman dates the Gospel of Peter somewhat later, at about 120, though in both cases it is still rejected as an important text. The Jesus Seminar asserts, “The Gospel of Peter depicts a mythical Jesus.”

The Gospel of Peter continues to be an intriguing source, but very seldom has much historical importance attached to it. The extreme cases of mythical accretion, such as the three giants, the cross that speaks as it emerges from the tomb, and so on, along with the possibility that the story could have grown even more substantially over the many decades from its earliest form, are all important problems. Gnostic hints along with potential anti-Jewish sentiment and apparent borrowing from perhaps all four canonical Gospels are also complications. The most serious issues are the questions pertaining to the absence of any early or other historical provenance along with the dates of such earlier sources. In short, confirming data, especially for the more unique aspects of the Gospel of Peter, are seriously lacking. As such, it provides no challenges to the many early records of Jesus’s death and resurrection appearances, such as those presented in the first volume of this study.

The Gospel of Judas

The unaware reader could be forgiven for taking at face value the overly bombastic news that broke in 2004—acting as if a recent find, the Gospel of Judas, would utterly change the direction of Christianity forever. Written around AD 150, this writing portrayed the apostle Judas as the hero of the events at the end of Jesus’s life, which closes with the abrupt ending of Judas turning Jesus over to the Jewish authorities. It might be thought that, without this action by Judas as the initiator of the final events in Jesus’s life, Jesus may never have been crucified and raised from the dead!

So was Judas a bit of a gospel facilitator? Throughout this Gospel, Judas is the hero, for he alone worships the Creator (the gnostic god) while the other apostles (and apparently the whole of orthodox theology) are under judgment for thinking Jehovah in the Old Testament is the same creator. Judas is thus superior to all the others.

Perrin notes three inferences found in the Gospel of Judas. The book teaches the docetic version of Gnosticism, where Jesus himself does not really have a physical body but is clothed with one. Jesus tells Judas twice, “You will exceed all of them, for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” Further, like Marcion above, the Gospel of Judas is anti-Jewish and vehemently opposes the identification or even the closeness of Judaism and Christianity. Finally, the Gospel of Judas is highly ­individualistic—it has “so little interest in ethics or community life.”

Is there any historical value to the Gospel of Judas? As perhaps the most prominent of all the gnostic authorities, James M. Robinson reported in his own evaluation of the situation regarding Judas, “One will find that it does not shed light on what happened during Jesus’s trip to Jerusalem . . . but rather will shed light on a second century Gnostic sect.” As Robinson implied, the sensationalists were hoping for more than that. However, this Gospel is simply too late to be historically helpful. Perrin notes that there is very little of any use for historians in the Gospel of Judas, adding that “the historical distance between the time of composition and the setting of its subject matter makes any claim of authenticity difficult to sustain.”

To be sure, the Gospel of Judas clearly portrays Jesus as teaching a number of very strange-sounding, secret gnostic doctrines. It also alters surrounding historical circumstances pertaining chiefly to Jesus’s betrayal. Moreover, different interpretations are provided throughout the scenes, such as reversing the canonical order of the Gospels by casting Judas as the hero.

But the overall view of Jesus in the Gospel of Judas is positive, beginning with Jesus being a marvelous miracle worker. Herbert Krosney states that the Gospel of Judas “was written by someone who revered Jesus. He communicates that adoration with fervor and good humor.” Further, Jesus appears more joyous in Judas than in the canonical Gospels. Nonetheless, Judas ends with Judas taking the offered money from the Jewish leaders and turning Jesus over to them. Even with these different scenes, teachings, and interpretations, there is no effort to deny the historicity of Jesus’s “betrayal.” There the Gospel of Judas ends.

While Jesus’s immaterial spirit did not die by crucifixion or any other way, the event of death by crucifixion that followed Judas’s betrayal is implied regarding the male body that “clothed” Jesus. Moreover, Jesus perhaps “appeared” afterward to his followers, though without his dying first. Krosney states it well: “The Gospel of Judas offers an alternative narrative, but does not challenge the bases of Christian faith.” Later, Krosney comments that Judas “does not directly criticize or contra­dict the canonical gospels.” However, one might fairly wonder how Jesus, by not actually dying by crucifixion himself, fails to question one of “the bases of Christian faith”!

Many other gnostic writings appeared after the ones that were viewed in this chapter and in the earlier treatment on historical sources for the existence of the historical Jesus in volume 1 of this study. While not valueless, they are really too late to help researchers understand what can be known about either Jesus’s life or the more formative criticisms of orthodox Christian beliefs.

Celsus

R. Joseph Hoffmann remarks that before Celsus’s time, moral critiques of Christians were more common than philosophical attacks simply because a solid body of canoni­cal texts was not yet available to the critics. Hoffmann adds that theological questions were also raised quite early, some of them even being obviously derived from the pages of what became the New Testament. Theological challenges for believers to address included the delay of Jesus’s return and Christians who left the faith during times of persecution, along with ethical questions about the early believers.

The moral aberrations of believers added numerous other problems of their own. Even in the New Testament Epistles, overlapping issues were charged and addressed, such as factions and infighting, cliquishness, gluttony, jealousy over spiritual gifts, libertinism, antinomianism, pleasure seeking, drunkenness, an entire cartel of sexual sins, lying, sorcery, and illicit cultic practices.

Later, non-Christians also began noticing believers who practiced what they considered to be unacceptable behaviors, though some of these reports plainly turned out to be due to false rumors, misinterpretations, and even outright lies. These widespread reports included Christians sacrificing or eating their children, sexual debaucheries, murder, treason, drinking blood, or that believers were really cannibals or even atheists! Hoffmann reports that most of these charges were “based almost certainly on casual impressions and heresay.”

Later Christian scholars who defended the Christians or answered specific charges included Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria. However, Justin, Tertullian, and Epiphanius also knew of Christian groups who did engage in detestable behavior. Surprisingly, given his several negative comments regarding believers taken from the same passage, Pliny the Younger seems to defend the Christian practice of the Eucharist in his area of Bithynia.

The Greek philosopher Celsus wrote his famous attack on Christians, On the True Doctrine, between 170 and 185. He concentrated less on the Christians’ perceived moral lapses and more on theological, historical, and philosophical problems. Though Celsus’s entire writing is lost, scholars conclude that his chief areas of attack may be retrieved from Origen’s careful critique Contra Celsum, written in the next century. In his text, Celsus raises a large number of objections to Christianity, many of which are subpoints of several major themes. Hoffmann notes, “As a rule, the pagan critics of the later second century, Celsus included, are critics of Christian credulity, not of Christian creeds.” Though perhaps the general rule, however, a number of Celsus’s criticisms were concerned with matters of Christian doctrine, including historical issues.

It might be mentioned initially that Celsus sometimes mistakenly attributes particular beliefs to Christians that they did not hold, though it is possible that some believers in his time did believe one or more of these. On the other hand, perhaps Celsus purposely or even mockingly attributed certain “silly” positions to Christians in order to make them appear even more senseless or preposterous. For example, stated in his own words, Celsus charged that Christians would preach like this: “Let no one educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near. For these abilities are thought by us to be evils. But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone childish, let him come boldly.” Closely related is this thought by Celsus: “Christian teachers are only happy with stupid pupils—indeed scout about for the slow-witted.” Hopefully, these comments do not even need to be addressed.

Regarding his other charges against Christians, Celsus speaks out against the biblical prophets as well as Jesus being incorrect in their predictive pronouncements. Further, Celsus thinks there are many discrepancies in the Bible. Also, one of Celsus’s most common criticisms, sometimes mentioned rather forcefully, is that Christians did not want their followers to ask questions and did not want to give any evidence for what they believed. “Just believe” was their motto, reports Celsus.

Four other critiques in particular demand a little more attention. First, Celsus was one of Jesus’s many detractors over the centuries, beginning with the Jewish leaders in the canonical Gospels themselves, who charged that Jesus was a magician and a sorcerer. Jesus’s reply to these Jewish leaders indicated that they had committed the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:28–30). Celsus states that Jesus learned these secrets in Egypt, where he went in order to take a job as a workman.

Second, Celsus declared more than once that Jesus’s mother, Mary, was by no means a virgin, since she was made pregnant via a Roman soldier named Panthera. Here Celsus repeats a comment that has shown up in a number of places, especially in later Jewish polemical material. As a result, Mary’s husband drove her away as an adulteress. Celsus adds that old Greek myths also reported a “divine birth” to various heroes.

Third, on many occasions, Celsus compares Christianity to pagan personages and religions. He asks repeatedly, Why should Christians boast about this or that teaching, miracle, prophecy, and so on when pagans also exhibit these along with other supernatural manifestations such as soothsaying and producing apparitions? The pagans even hold corresponding doctrines that are similar to those of Jews and Christians, making the latter just one tradition among many. Of course, Celsus adds, Christians will reject all of the pagan occurrences out of hand but assume that theirs are all true. Moreover, pagans have suffered willingly too. So, what are the claimed differences all about? However, it appears that some sleight of hand is going on here by Celsus, and it should be recognized on its own grounds.

Fourth, Celsus makes numerous observations with reference to Jesus’s resurrection. For instance, he levels his well-known comment regarding this event being based on the hallucinations of a hysterical woman and maybe one other (unnamed) person. The comment might appear rather odd, because Celsus would know that there were more than two resurrection witnesses. But as Hoffmann notes, he was probably just talking about the scene at the tomb in the Gospel of John; though even if so, the apostle John was also reportedly Peter’s companion on that occasion, which is not mentioned by Celsus.

Celsus takes quite a negative view of the resurrection. He proclaims that Christians worship a mere man who stayed dead. But if Jesus were ever dead, then how could he be immortal? Further, even if Jesus predicted his resurrection, as Christians claimed, many pagans experienced similar experiences as well.

Overall, Celsus clearly took a very dim view of Christianity, questioning it on numerous fronts. Most of his complaints studied here had to do with the supernatural claims made by Christians, which he rejected. These would include subjects like Jesus’s virgin birth, miracles, prophecies (as well as those prophecies cited by Christians from the Old Testament), and, of course, Jesus’s resurrection. For Celsus, the presence of contradictions and inconsistencies in any of these accounts always constituted an important critique, and he thought there were many of them.

In most cases, Celsus was quite fond of comparing Christian claims to supernatural beliefs from among the pagans, which he apparently rejected anyway. But as pointed out above, these claims alone, no matter on whose side they may fall, far from settle the crucial issues. So, one’s case is not made just by trading claims for and against a proposition. Anyone can make claims, but which ones, if any, are most likely true—or, in this case, historical? Celsus would even agree that subjects such as those discussed here have far more to do with the strength of the evidence. So, if only one position turns out to be correct, it can hardly be opposed by flaunting more claims of a contrary sort.

Conclusion

As Ehrman crucially states more than once, the diversity of theological views really develops in the second century rather than in the first: “Virtually, the only Christian writings that can be reliably dated to the first century are found in the New Testament itself.” On the other hand, “most of the noncanonical Gospels are legendary and late, dating from the second to the eighth centuries.” Then in a blow to the radical scholars who want to move Thomas and other proto-gnostic books to the mid-first century or so, Ehrman asserts, “We have nothing to suggest that the beliefs embraced by later Gnostic Christians were present in first-century rural Palestine.”

In this chapter the subject of early challenges to the death and resurrection appearances of Jesus were treated, and the overall study produced positive results with regard to this subject. From AD 30 until perhaps 140—that is, later in the Tier 1 category—a few examples of diverse views in nonfundamental areas of general Christian theology were observed. But no denials of either of these two crucial gospel events were witnessed during this time. Excluding Celsus at the very end of this time period, the only aberrations surrounded proto-gnostic or gnostic doctrine, which we have discussed in a little detail. As Perrin notes, more developed gnostic thought does not emerge until the mid-second century. Further, “as far as we know, the historical accuracy of the four Gospels was never questioned” until the same time.

Approximately AD 140 or perhaps somewhat later, there were a few proto-­gnostic or gnostic texts that mentioned, assumed, or accepted the crucifixion, though Jesus himself was thought to have actually escaped that death on the cross. But this view was not due to any historical evidence. Rather, it was a concept that functioned strictly for theological reasons, since it was often believed among these gnostics that Jesus never really had a physical body in the first place and could not really die. So, this less-than-physical doctrine was not motivated by any historical evidence but by former doctrinal commitments. As Perrin reminds us, “Both sides would have agreed that their respective claims cannot simultaneously hold true. The claims . . . are fundamentally at odds with each other.”

What was the practical value of such gnostic and semi-gnostic beliefs? As pointed out above, it certainly seemed that everyone in the canonical Gospels who contacted Jesus thought he had a physical body—he walked, talked, ate, drank, touched others, and was touched throughout his life. So, for all practical purposes, this gnostic position was not grounded in any substantial data or evidence. It is difficult to say exactly, but if not by the midpoint of the second century, certainly these positions were proclaimed within just a few decades after this time.

For the same theological reasons, there were a couple of accounts from this general time or a little later where it was hinted that Jesus truly did appear to his disciples and others after whatever happened to him or to someone else on the cross (or just before it), though he still may not have had a physical body during these appearances. But again, as just explained, this disembodied position was held due to prior doctrinal beliefs, not because this is where the data were located. Hence, as before, this was a rather ungrounded and trivialized position held on faith alone. As will be seen later, the view was mistaken as well.

One reason this is known is because Jesus apparently looked to everyone present precisely as if he possessed a physical body. After all, he had been observed and treated by everyone throughout his entire public ministry as if his body were real. He occupied time and space, traveled by foot, talked, and ate. Significantly, he touched others, and when they touched him, their hands did not pass straight through him. The canonical Gospels do not refer to Jesus as a phantom. So without any indications to the contrary from the physical world, it is difficult to draw anything but a theological distinction here.

In an extended argument reaching literally hundreds of pages in length, N. T. Wright argues similarly and in great depth that the change in belief among some Christians from bodily to nonbodily appearances (chiefly as held by the gnostics) did not come until somewhere between the late second century and the writings of Tertullian (died c. 220). From the crucifixion until this time, at least a century and a half, the Christian view was that the use of Greek terms like anastasis, egeirō, and their cognates indicated that the appearances of Jesus were bodily in nature. This would be very close to the findings here.

One of the easily missed points made repeatedly by Wright on this subject is that “there is no difference between pagans, Jews and Christians.” Thus, whenever and by whomever these terms were used, a bodily situation after death was being discussed, though pagans almost always despised this bodily afterlife option. The point is not that pagans and others rejected the existence of any other disembodied afterlife manifestations such as ghosts or spirits, for they could always have used Greek terms like pneuma for those entities. Rather, it was the case that, when the particular words anastasis, egeirō, and their cognates were used, these specific terms referred only to bodily afterlife events. So if nonbodily entities were being discussed, different terms were employed.

Writing approximately at the same time as the gnostic movement just mentioned, Celsus’s On the True Doctrine denied Jesus’s historical resurrection appearances al-together, whether bodily or not. It was written a long way from the events of AD 30 (in the category termed Tier 2, dating from about 150–200). But here the resurrection event was rejected outright, with Celsus’s critique coming at the end of the outlying period of time for this study of the historical Jesus. But at approximately 130–50 years after the crucifixion, Celsus’s critique had already reached the extremes of the historical parameters in terms of assisting with the historical goals here. As indicated in the earlier survey of the historical Jesus in volume 1 of this study, a number of scholars think that such a time gap is too far away from the crucifixion to be of any real historical value anyway. That is why this text moves from the second century here to the eighteenth century in chapter 2, where alternative challenges to Jesus’s resurrection grow more sophisticated. Regardless, it appears to have taken a few decades longer, until the time of Celsus, for perhaps the earliest writing to have rejected outright this historical event.

Notes

Regarding the input from archaeology in the twentieth century and on into this present century, many details may be found in a large number of worthwhile sources, written from liberal and conservative perspectives as well as those in between. Some of these discoveries open the door to more general background information, while a few of them contribute more directly to the possibility of greater knowledge concerning the historical Jesus and related data. For starters, these sources on the value of archaeology for historical Jesus studies include William M. Ramsay, Luke the Physician, and Other Studies in the History of Religion (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908); William Foxwell Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1946), particularly chap. 6, sec. D; Millar Burrows, What Mean These Stones? The Significance of Archaeology for Biblical Studies (New Haven, CT: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1941); A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); Joseph P. Free with Howard F. Vos, Archaeology and Bible History, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), esp. chaps. 26–29; Jonathan L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000); John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Geza Vermes, Jesus in His Jewish Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, vol. 1 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); Craig S. Keener, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), see chap. 13 and 179–83 in particular; F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), esp. chap. 11; R. T. France, The Evidence for Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), esp. chap. 4; Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996), see chap. 8. For several more-specialized archaeological studies related to the specific themes of this overall study, see V. Tzaferis, “Jewish Tombs at and near Giv’at ha-Mivtar,” Israel Exploration Journal 20 (1970): 18–32; Vassilios Tzaferis, “Crucifixion—The Archaeological Evidence,” Biblical Archaeological Review 11 (1985): 44–53; N. Haas, “Anthropological Observations on the Skeletal Remains from Giv’at ha-Mivtar,” Israel Exploration Journal 20 (1970): 38–59; Joseph Zias and Eliezer Sekeles, “The Crucified Man from Giv’at ha-Mivtar: A Reappraisal,” Israel Exploration Journal 35 (1985): 22–27; Joe Zias and James H. Charlesworth, “Crucifixion: Archaeology, Jesus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 273–89; Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).

Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 2, 17, 20–23, 167, 194–96, 268.

These sources include the exceptionally early and valuable creedal traditions found almost solely in the epistles that are usually thought by scholars to have their roots in the 30s or slightly thereafter.

For reference, the most helpful pagan sources were from the Tier 1 period here (though Josephus is dated a little before AD 100), with the Mishnah being composed at the close of Tier 2 (about 200). It might be noted that with a few considerations, there is some slight overlap with volume 1 of this study, chiefly in the chapter concerning the historicity of Jesus, where a few passages from Tier 1 texts are considered with regard to what they may have contributed strictly regarding Jesus’s life. Those references were more specifically topical and more of a historical nature, including sources that mentioned Jesus sparsely, rather than the general overviews in this discussion.

In his own studies, for example, Ehrman includes in his primary grouping of texts for the historical Jesus those that were in existence within 100 years after Jesus’s crucifixion (i.e., from approximately AD 30–130). This collection by Ehrman corresponds roughly to what is being termed the canonical sources composed before Tier 1. See Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 97; Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 44, 197.

The term “serious” is important here. No one is asserting that there were no disputes whatsoever in the earliest canonical period. New Testament texts like Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 15, among many other similar passages, should alone put an end to the sort of thinking that questions disputes in the early era. But as addressed below, the term “serious” does not apply to matters concerning which enjoyable dialogues are the focus of the three- and four-views books that even conservatives enjoying reading today. Thus, “serious challenges” are taken here to address matters such as attacks on the Christian gospel of the deity, death, and resurrection of Jesus, or other areas commonly termed the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.

Accounts such as Matthew’s story of the priests bribing the guards at the tomb to report that Jesus’s disciples stole his dead body and presumably lying later about his appearances are of course examples defending the orthodox accounts rather than any sort of disputed themes among believers.

This was the same time that Origen was born, and he wrote his famous apologetic work Contra Celsum against Celsus a half century later.

Jeremiah J. Johnston states that Porphyry was “akin to modern-day ‘New Atheists.’” See Johnston, The Resurrection of Jesus in the Gospel of Peter: A Tradition-Historical Study of the Akhmîm Fragment (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 143.

As strange as it may seem, the atheist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman dates the Gospel of Thomas to about AD 120 (New Testament, 44), which is within the range of dates chosen by evangelical New Testament scholar Darrell L. Bock in The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville: Nelson, 2006), esp. the chart on 219, cf. also 7, 59–65.

The most influential volume that taught some of these ideas was probably anthropologist James George Frazer’s well-known study, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1890). The best-known scholar who applied this thesis to the New Testament was most likely Wilhelm Bousset’s 1913 work, Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus, trans. John E. Steely (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970). Another influential scholar was Ernst Troeltsch, “The Significance of Jesus for Faith,” in Troeltsch, The Christian Faith, trans. Garrett E. Paul (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 87–100 (originally published in 1925); Troeltsch, “The Significance of the Historical Existence of Jesus for Faith (1911),” in Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion, ed. and trans. Robert Morgan and Michael Pye (Atlanta: Knox, 1977), 182–207.

Otto Pfleiderer, The Early Christian Conception of Christ: Its Significance and Value in the History of Religion (London: Williams & Norgate, 1905), as in chaps. 2 and 4.

Pfleiderer, 51–53, 65–68, 154–55. Compare Buddhist scholar Edward Conze, trans. and ed., Buddhist Scriptures (London: Penguin, 1959), 11–12, 34, on the disparity of dates between the reports of the early church and the documents that report them versus the huge temporal distances between Buddha’s teachings and actions and the sources regarding his words and exploits. More recent though very similar evaluations of Buddha’s sources is supplied by Paul Gwynne, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad: A Comparative Study (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 1–6, 18–19; and Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation (Chatsworth, CA: Random House Harmony, 1999), 13.

Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 500–501, 548, plus charts on 18, 128; Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 555. For examples of those dating the Gospel of Thomas later, Stephen J. Patterson leans toward AD 70–80 in The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Salem, OR: Polebridge, 1993), 120. The date of 70–100 is also mentioned in Robert J. Miller, ed., The Complete Gospels (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 303.

Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 2:7, 152.

Burton L. Mack, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 181.

Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, Five Gospels, 15, 548; Funk and the Jesus Seminar, Acts of Jesus, 555; Mack, Lost Gospel, 16, 26–27, 34–38, 177, 181, plus charts on 259 and 260–61.

Walter Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1934). The English translation was published as Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, ed. Robert Kraft and Gerhard Krodel, trans. Paul J. Achtemeier (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971).

Examples include Frederik Wisse, “The Use of Early Christian Literature as Evidence for Inner Diversity and Conflict,” in Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, and Early Christianity, ed. Charles Hedrick and Robert Hodgson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986), 177–92; James M. Robinson, “On Bridging the Gulf from Q to the Gospel of Thomas (or Vice Versa),” in Hedrick and Hodgson, Nag Hammadi, 127–76; Helmut Koester, “Introduction to The Gospel of Thomas,” in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 116; Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), xxii–xxiv, 12–13, 20, 29, 32, 56, 84–90, 112–14, 170–71, 177–81. A popular and older example is A. Powell Davies, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: New American Library, 1956), particularly 120.

Raymond E. Brown, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1984), esp. 16–18.

For this second-century date for the Gospel of Thomas, including a number of good arguments for these conclusions, see James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 58–59, 161–65; John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 5 vols., Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:333. See N. T. Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 436, for some historical perspective on this question. See also Keener, Historical Jesus, 54–57; Bock, Missing Gospels, esp. 61–63 where Bock surveys a number of recent scholars on the general date for Thomas; Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1987), 210–11.

That most scholars also think the Gospel of Thomas borrowed at least from the Synoptic Gospels is noted by Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 162, 165, cf. 59; Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:124–39, 2:332–33, 476–77n106; F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 1370; Craig Evans, “Jesus and the Gnostic Literature,” Biblica 62 (1981): 406–12; Keener, Historical Jesus, 54–55; Bock, Missing Gospels, 61; Craig Blomberg, “Tradition and Redaction in the Parables of the Gospel of Thomas,” Gospel Perspectives: The Jesus Tradition outside the Gospel, ed. David Wenham and Craig Blomberg (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), 177–205; France, Evidence for Jesus, 75–78; cf. Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 228n72 (in this footnote, following C. M. Tuckett, Eddy and Boyd even make the point that the direction in 1 Cor 2:9 // Gos. Thom. 17 seems to favor the Gospel of Thomas borrowing from Paul).

Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 439n72.

Mack, Lost Gospel, 181. For other “kid-gloves” treatments of some Q sayings, see 86, 132, as well as an example of the informal logical faux pas of Mack’s genetic fallacy on 215.

Such as his late dating of the Synoptic Gospels plus Acts, even placing the compositions of Luke and Acts at about AD 120. See Mack, Lost Gospel, 178, 183, 186, chart on 259. All the while Mack backs the dating of the Gospel of Thomas into the first century, favoring a main date of about 90 though with aspects extending back to 65 (see the chart on 259). These are simply incredible and unacceptable switches and flip-arounds without the necessary arguments in support. But such is the attitudinal nature of much radical criticism at present. Other naive arguments from Mack occur when he compares Q and the Synoptic Gospels with regard to their miracle accounts, of course with more out-of-the-mainstream and unsupported criticisms of the Gospel texts; see Lost Gospel, 18, 22, 246.

Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 439n72.

Mack, Lost Gospel, 181.

Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 436.

Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010).

Carson’s recommendation appears in the front pages of the volume by Köstenberger and Kruger.

Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, Five Gospels, 5–6, 24, include just a few of the examples.

Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, 34.

Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, 5, but see also 28, 33, and so on.

Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, 16, 24–25, 32–33.

Along with Carson’s recommendation above, these comments also appear in the front pages of Köstenberger and Kruger, Heresy of Orthodoxy, as do additional remarks of a similar nature from New Testament scholars Charles Hill, Darrell Bock, and Paul Trebilco.

N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, vol. 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 40, including n57.

Wright, 43.

Wright, 43.

Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, xxiii.

O. C. Edwards, “A Surprising View of Gnosticism,” New Review of Books and Religion (May 1980): 27.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Gnostic Gospels according to Pagels,” America (February 16, 1980): 123.

Pheme Perkins, “Popularizing the Past,” Commonweal (November 9, 1979): 634–35.

Edwards, “Surprising View of Gnosticism,” 7.

Perkins, “Popularizing the Past,” 635.

For these many details among others, see Raymond E. Brown, “The Christians Who Lost Out,” New York Times Book Review (January 20, 1980): 3; Kathleen McVey, “Gnosticism, Feminism, and Elaine Pagels,” Theology Today 37 (1981): 498, 501; Edwards, “Surprising View of Gnosticism,” 7; Fitzmyer, “Gnostic Gospels according to Pagels,” 122; Perkins, “Popularizing the Past,” 635.

Brown, “Christians Who Lost Out,” 3, though again, the chief issue is not whether there is much of value in the Gospel of Thomas but rather its historical provenance. Interestingly, Bock agrees with Brown on the possible presence of some authentic sayings of Jesus in Thomas ; see Bock, Missing Gospels, 7, 61, 63.

Fitzmyer, “Gnostic Gospels according to Pagels,” 122–23.

William R. Farmer, “The Church’s Stake in the Question of ‘Q,’” Perkins School of Theology Journal 39 (1986): 12, 14. Farmer’s full-length treatise on this topic was one of the first scholarly whistle-blowing efforts here: The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis (Lon­don: Macmillan, 1964).

Strange as it may seem, even Bart D. Ehrman dates the Gospel of Thomas to about AD 130 in Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 44. This 130 date is within the range of dates chosen by evangelical New Testament scholar Darrell Bock, Missing Gospels, 7, 59–65! An agnostic skeptic who makes helpful comments in this regard was the late Maurice Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), esp. 18, cf. also 52, 59. Cf. also Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 41.

Simon Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas: Introduction and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2014); see also Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas: Original Language and Influences, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 151 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), who dates the Gospel of Thomas at about AD 140 (171). All three of these texts also opt in detail for the Gospel of Thomas’s dependence on Matthew and Luke, along with other New Testament books.

John Meier makes an amazing statement here. He states that he can show the likeli­hood of this reliance of the Gospel of Thomas on Matthew and Luke based only on just four key passages: sayings 54, 68, 69a, and 69b. See Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:333. Goodacre spends an entire chapter on Gos. Thom. 79 because he considers the case for dependency on Luke to be so strong here; see chap. 6 of Thomas and the Gospels. Most of all, Gathercole develops his argument for the dependence of the Gospel of Thomas in over 100 pages alone in his comparatively short volume on this text; see chaps. 6–11 in Composition of the Gospel of Thomas.

This question has been discussed at length throughout this chapter with the conclusion being that the Gospel of Thomas is most likely a mid-second-century composition. Appropriate sources are listed throughout, such as Nicholas Perrin, The Judas Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 24.

Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 436.

For just a few examples, there are the early creeds in 1 Cor 11:23–25; 15:3–7, among many others, plus other passages such as Gal 1:18–24; 2:1–10, each of these being drawn from what Ehrman (as well as virtually all other critical scholars) terms the “undisputed Pauline epistles.” See Ehrman, New Testament, 262, 290, cf. 44. Luke 1:1–4 and the Acts sermon summaries (the latter found chiefly in Acts 1–5, 10, 13, and 17) also must be given their critical scholarly due, with Ehrman dating at least some of the latter to just one to two years after the crucifixion in Did Jesus Exist?, 109–13, 140–41, 172, 232, 261–62!

The defense and explication of these last four arguments would take us far beyond the present scope of the above topic. However, for the details, see the sources in footnotes 33–41 above, plus the interested reader may consult volume 1 of this study. For a briefer look, see Habermas, Historical Jesus, particularly 106–18.

The meaning of Jesus being called “the living Jesus” (prologue) or “the Living One” (59, 111, cf. 52b) in the Gospel of Thomas is discussed later in this chapter.

Gregory J. Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), esp. 177–79. Regarding the relevance of discussing the date for the Gospel of Thomas, Riley is one of the researchers who holds to the first-century date and considers the Gospel of Thomas to be earlier than the canonical Gospels. As such, Reilly mentions its nonphysical view of resurrection and that it may be both earlier and more authoritative than the later bodily version found in the Gospels (66, 178–79). For example, in Gos. Thom. 71, Jesus states that no one will raise his body, presumably because while he definitely will be raised from the dead in a spiritual body, perhaps like that which was witnessed by the apostle Paul in Jesus’s appearances described in Acts 9, 22, and 26, his physical body will never be raised (178). Riley takes the old position on 1 Corinthians 15 that Paul (like the Gospel of Thomas) also taught that Jesus was raised and appeared in a spiritual body (88–90, 96, 177–79). Incidentally, Riley crucially considers the pre-Pauline creed in 1 Cor 15:3–5 to be the very earliest of the known resurrection appearance texts (65).

For a list of a few of the critical scholars who either advocate or lean toward other alternatives besides Markan priority or the existence of Q, see William R. Farmer, “Preface: Order Out of Chaos,” The Perkins School of Theology Journal 40 (1987): 1–6. For a number of more recent studies questioning the existence of Q by quite prominent scholars, see Mark Goodacre, The Case against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem (London: T&T Clark, 2002); Mark Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin, eds., Questioning Q: A Collection of Essays (London: SPCK, 2005). For a helpful summary of arguments for and against theses such as the priority of Mark and the existence of Q, see David Barrett Peabody, “In Retrospect and Prospect,” The Perkins School of Theology Journal 40 (1987): 9–16.

Marcus J. Borg, The Lost Gospel Q: The Original Sayings of Jesus, ed. Mark Powelson and Ray Riegert (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses, 1996), 15.

Borg, Lost Gospel Q, 16.

Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, Five Gospels, 18, 128.

Miracles are reported in QS 15 and QS 16, and an exorcism is found in QS 28, according to Mack’s reckoning of the Q passages (corresponding to Q 23, Q 24, and Q 37, respectively, in Borg’s accounting).

Both Matthew and Luke also report the request for a miracle that was answered by Jesus, who offered the coming sign of Jonah (QS 32 Mack; Q 41 Borg). However, the words regarding the three days and nights in the great fish as recorded in Matt 12:38–40 were deleted in both of these textual renditions of the Q sayings, probably since they are absent from the passage in Luke. One question, however, concerns whether the words implying Jesus’s resurrection in Matthew were incorrectly left out of Mack’s and Borg’s critical texts.

I. Howard Marshall, Commentary on Luke, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 485.

Much scholarly research has been done on this question, including PhD dissertations. Examples include Simon Siu Chun Chow, “The Sign of Jonah Reconsidered: A Study of its Meaning in the Gospel Traditions” (PhD diss., Uppsala Universitet, 1995); Titus Oluwafidipe Oluwafemi, “Jesus’ Resurrection as the Ultimate ‘Sign’ of His Messianic Authority (A Special Reference Study of the Jonah-Sign in Matthew-Luke and the Temple-Sign in John),” (PhD diss., Baylor University, 1979).

This list would include a number of relevant researchers. James M. Robinson thinks it is possible that, like the Gospel of Thomas, the entire perspective of Q also may be that of the living Jesus (“Jesus from Easter to Valentinus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 101 [1982]: 23–24). Robinson adds that a theme not being as prominent as some might think does not mean that the communities were unaware of those teachings (Robinson, “The Sayings of Jesus: Q,” Drew Gateway [1983]: 32). The Jesus Seminar even judged that the Jesus who speaks in the prologue to the Gospel of Thomas may possibly be that of the resurrected Jesus (Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, Five Gospels, 398). Borg indicates a possible though rather strange position that the Gospel of Thomas may depict the living Jesus, regardless of whether or not the Gospel of Thomas community knew about the resurrection (Borg, “Thinking about Easter,” Bible Review 10 [1994]: 49). Speaking more of Q but also with some relevance to the Gospel of Thomas, Meier remarks that concluding that the Q group had no “knowledge of or interest in Jesus’ death and resurrection is simply not verified by the data at our disposal.” See John P. Meier, “Dividing Lines in Jesus Research Today: Through Dialectical Negation to a Positive Sketch,” Interpretation 50 (1996): 59. Similar to Meier, N. T. Wright thinks that simply not enough is known about Q (or the Gospel of Thomas for that matter) to remark dogmatically concerning the specific content regarding these sorts of questions; see Jesus and the Victory of God, 41–43. Gerald O’Collins cites Raymond Brown, who criticizes the confidence of those who think that they possess and understand the entire knowledge of the Q community simply by reconstructing Q; see O’Collins, Interpreting the Resurrection (Mahweh, NJ: Paulist, 1988), 18. Pheme Perkins notes about Q (and the Gospel of Thomas should be added here as well) that “there is no element of early Christian belief in Jesus of Nazareth that is not marked by the ‘resurrection.’” See Perkins, “The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,” in Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research, ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 442.

Robert M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 183–84.

Robinson, “Jesus from Easter to Valentinus,” 23–24.

Reginald H. Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1965), 143.

Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, Five Gospels, 16–18; Funk and the Jesus Seminar, Acts of Jesus, 388–89, while questioning its existence at least somewhat (389).

Crossan, Historical Jesus, 429.

As mentioned previously, views regarding the mode of Jesus’s resurrection appearances would sometimes arise later without rejecting the occurrence itself. As Wright asserts, the bodily appearance “meaning is constant throughout the ancient world, until we come to a new coinage in the second century.” See Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), esp. 31 for this quotation, also 547, 550–51.

Depending somewhat on whether the Gospel of Thomas is early (which was reject­ed here).

Brown, Churches the Apostles Left Behind, 146.

Brown, 86, 147–48n201. Brown cites Reginald Fuller as also agreeing especially on the last point regarding the center of the orthodox message; R. H. Fuller, “New Testament Trajectories and Biblical Authority,” in Studia Evangelica VII, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1982), 189–99.

Brown, Churches the Apostles Left Behind, 20–21, 31–46.

Brown, 21, 47–60.

Brown, 21–22, 61–74.

Brown, 22–24, 84–101. On the point pertaining to John and preexistence, Simon Gathercole wrote The Pre-Existent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) since Brown’s death, arguing quite persuasively and in much detail that each of the Synoptic Gospels also teaches the preexistence of Jesus in a variety of ways. If Gathercole is correct here, this would make a more then noteworthy difference to Brown’s thesis at this point.

Brown, Churches the Apostles Left Behind, 25–26.

Brown, 25–29, 124–45.

Brown, 29–30.

Brown, 146–50, quotation on 149.

Crossan, Historical Jesus, 428–29.

Philipp Vielhauer and Georg Strecker, “Jewish Christian Gospels,” in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. Robert McLachlan Wilson, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 1:177–78.

Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2:223–24.

Vielhauer and Strecker also agree in listing and treating these “Hebrew Gospels” as the Gospel of the Nazareans, the Gospel of the Ebionites, and the Gospel of the Hebrews.

Crossan, Historical Jesus, 433. In spite of the likely differences in dates between these three Hebrew Gospels, they were grouped here together due to some of their similarities of outlook and content.

Discussing a number of the intricacies involved in these subjects are Vielhauer and Strecker, “Jewish Christian Gospels,” 134–78; Ron Cameron, ed., The Other Gospels: Non-Canonical Gospel Texts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1982), 83–86, 97–106; Crossan, Historical Jesus, 428–29; Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2:223–24; Ehrman, New Testament, 180–82, cf. 170–78, 256–59; D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 71; Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, 99–109; Bock, Missing Gospels, 218–19.

It is sometimes said that Adolf von Harnack’s work on Marcion is the foremost study ever written here; see Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1921). English translation in von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, trans. John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007).

Most of this information on Marcion is commonly known. Further details may be found in Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 549–58; F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988), esp. 134–44; Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 1:99; 2:8–10, 307–8, 328–34; Ehrman, New Testament, 3–6, 11, 89, 170–82; Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction, rev. ed. (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1990), 126–27, 609–11, 986–88.

This depends, for example, on when the Muratorian Canon is dated. Surprisingly, though often placed a few decades after Marcion at about 180, Koester notes that some scholars date the Muratorian Canon up to a century earlier than that! See Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2:11.

For some details, see Habermas, Historical Jesus, 108–14.

Especially Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, 65 in the context of 58–68; Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2:331.

This double problem with Marcion’s denial of the death and resurrection of Jesus needs to be differentiated from a different issue that is often raised in some circles in contemporary theological discussions. It must be noted very carefully that there is no effort or desire whatsoever in this study to minimize Jesus’s bodily resurrection and appearances, which are clearly affirmed. This doctrine is crucially important and is clearly the New Testament position, as mentioned throughout these volumes and particularly emphasized in volume 4. Yet the contrast is sometimes made between those who hold that Jesus actually died, rose, and appeared bodily and those who hold that Jesus actually died, rose, and appeared in a glorified, spiritual body (perhaps like the type of body that some think Paul saw in Acts 9, 22, 26 on the way to Damascus). If it is helpful to describe it this way, the difference here is in how bodily Jesus’s appearances were in each of these positions. Both views embrace the facts of Jesus’s literal death, resurrection, and appearances. The truth and facticity of Jesus’s resurrection appearances is held in both positions, with the bottom line being Jesus’s appearance in a resurrection body, even if in the latter case Paul’s description of “spiritual body” is used. These views may differ, which is an important matter vis-à-vis the New Testament teaching, though it appears that both views are clearly pro-resurrection positions, unlike Marcion’s.

The implication in the Mishnah that Jesus’s mother Mary was not a virgin seems similar to Celsus’s criticisms that are discussed below.

See M. R. James, ed. and trans., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), 90, who listed the Gospel of Peter’s discovery date as 1884. In a recent evaluation, Jeremiah J. Johnston, “The Gospel of Peter: The Importance of a North African Discovery,” Sapientia Logos 3 (2011): 183–215, placed the date of discovery as 1886–1887. A popular discussion is found in the blog by J. Warner Wallace, “Why Shouldn’t We Trust the Non-canonical Gospels Attributed to Peter?,” Cold Case Christianity, March 23, 2018, https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/why-shouldnt-we-trust-the-non-canonical-gospels-attributed-to-peter/.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 595.

Johnston, “Gospel of Peter,” 209.

Crossan, The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative (New York: HarperCollins, 1988).

James, Apocryphal New Testament, 90.

Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 1287, 1301, 1305–7; cf. Johnston, “Gospel of Peter,” 209.

For Johnston’s comment and quotation, see “Gospel of Peter,” 209–10, 212. For J. K. Elliott’s research, see The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation Based on M. R. James (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 151.

Johnston “Gospel of Peter,” 207; cf. Wallace, “Non-canonical Gospels.”

Johnston “Gospel of Peter,” 207.

Funk and the Jesus Seminar, Acts of Jesus, 553.

Ehrman, New Testament, 44.

Funk and the Jesus Seminar, Acts of Jesus, 451.

For a few examples, see Perrin, Judas Gospel, 3–4, 31.

Perrin, 13.

Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst with François Gaudard, eds., The Gospel of Judas (Washington, DC: The National Geographic Society, 2006), 4, 43.

Perrin, Judas Gospel, 19–23.

James M. Robinson, The Secrets of Judas: The Story of the Misunderstood Disciple and His Lost Gospel (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 183.

Perrin, Judas Gospel, 24–25, for the quotation, cf. 25.

Kasser et al., Gospel of Judas. See esp. the portions of the translation under the headings “The Earthly Ministry of Jesus” and “Conclusion: Judas Betrays Jesus.” Besides the sometimes-raving newspaper articles, another popular treatment of Judas is the volume by Herbert Krosney, The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Washington, DC: The National Geographic Society, 2006). The above quotation from Krosney is from 278.

As an example of the explosive, overblown comments about Judas, the Coptic translator of the Gospel of Judas, Professor Rodolphe Kasser, claims in the prologue of his volume that “it is certainly one of the greatest discoveries of this century” (9). But just years after the publication of Krosney’s book, the Gospel of Judas is rarely even mentioned, except perhaps in a very few specific, scholarly circumstances. Further, never do scholars hold either that it was written by Judas Iscariot or that it is an essentially historical or otherwise accurate work. Yet, near the end of Krosney’s volume, it is commented: “Because the Gospel of Judas was written in the century that followed Jesus’ life, it is a startling text that provides fresh insight into early Christianity and its varied movements” (279). In this context, it is very difficult to understand the use and meaning of words such as “startling text,” “fresh insight,” and especially “early Christianity,” at least with any literal meaning, given the true nature of this writing apart from any sensational hype. Note too that Krosney, a few pages before, begins another sentence regarding Judas with these words: “The codex, written during the very heart of the early Christian era.” In particular, how is “early” to be understood here when the author also tells his readers that Judas was written during the next century after Jesus? (279; cf. Perrin, Judas Gospel, 4). Given this late date, it is difficult to ascertain how the codex could possibly provide any “fresh insight” into “Christianity.” This is especially true since the codex is supposed to apply Gnostic Christianity from over a century later, which is entirely too late to provide any new considerations.

To make matters worse, Ehrman also refers to the Gospel of Judas as “ancient” in his foreword to Krosney, Lost Gospel, xvii, and elsewhere he refers to books written in the second century as “early” (New Testament, 2). Some skeptics might complain that the second century is indeed “early” and “ancient” when compared to all the later centuries. But what is so strange about these sorts of comments is that some of these same scholars would probably hesitate seriously to call any of the Synoptic Gospels early or ancient, and this would much more rarely be the case with John, even though the Fourth Gospel was written more than a half century before Judas! Remember too that Ehrman only counts the first 100 years of sources for the historical Jesus in his book Did Jesus Exist? (e.g., 56, 171, 290–91, cf. 140–41). But when it favors the second-century gnostic works, critical scholars frequently seem to want to point the conversation in a different direction, raising the rhetoric on behalf of these clearly later and nonhistorical writings. It is this difference that further illustrates the comments above on the double standard used with the canonical works (especially the Gospels) over against the gnostic writings, seemingly hoping to raise the standard of diversity of the available sources.

Kasser et al., Gospel of Judas, 4, 43.

Krosney, Lost Gospel, 279.

Krosney, 295.

Using the convenient chart provided by Darrell Bock in Missing Gospels, 218–19, a few of the more important works (for various reasons), along with Bock’s suggested dates, are as follows. First, surveyed and used in the volume 1 chapter on the existence of Jesus: the Gospel of Thomas (late first to early second century); the Gospel of Truth (mid-second century); Treatise on Resurrection (also called the Letter to Rheginos; late second century); the Apocryphon of John (mid-second to early third century). Regarding the Gospel of Peter just mentioned in this chapter, Bock suggests a mid-second-century date. Works that are often or generally thought to simply be too late to include for historical purposes include the Gospel of Mary Magdalene; the Gospel of Philip; the Apocryphon of James; the Gospel of Thomas the Contender; and the Valentinian Exposition. Each of these writings, except for the Gospel of Peter, is available in Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, cited earlier.

R. Joseph Hoffmann, “General Introduction” to Celsus, On the True Doctrine: A Discourse against the Christians, trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 24.

Hoffmann, “General Introduction,” 9–13.

Similarly, Hoffmann, 13–16, mentioning a few New Testament texts, such as Rom 8:12–13; 1 Cor 5:1; 11–15; Jude v. 11, to which many other texts could be appended.

Hoffmann, 25.

Hoffmann, 16–25.

See Ep. 97 in Pliny the Younger, Letters, trans. William Melmoth, rev. by F. C. T. Bosanquet (New York: Collier & Son, 1909), 404–6. Emperor Trajan’s reply appears in the next letter (Ep. 98).

Hoffmann, “General Introduction,” 28–30.

In quoting or citing Celsus’s words here, Hoffmann’s edition is being followed where particular passage references are not used. Thus, only a page number will be provided.

Celsus, On the True Doctrine, 72–73.

Celsus, 75.

Here are a few more of Celsus’s erroneous comments from On the True Doctrine: Christians agree that there are seven heavens and the way of the soul is through the planets (95). Many self-styled Christian prophets call themselves God, the Son of God, or the Holy Spirit (106)! Christians worship the Son of Man and claim that he is mightier than the almighty God (117). One does wonder on the last point how someone can be mightier than an almighty Being?

Celsus, 58–59, 119–21.

Celsus, 64, 68, 90. Hoffmann notes that for Celsus, the inconsistencies and discrepancies were “fatal” to Christianity; see his “General Introduction,” 36, 39, 137n108, 141n161.

Celsus, On the True Doctrine, 54, 72–76. Hoffmann also mentions in his introduction Celsus’s attacks on Christians in these areas; see “General Introduction,” 27–29, 128n5.

Celsus adds other items on this subject, including that these pagan sorcerers also did miracles: “They drive away demons, conquer diseases of all kinds, and make the dead heroes of the past appear” (On the True Doctrine, 59–60). Is it thought that Celsus really believed these pagan miracles that he seems to report here rather straightforwardly? Apparently not, since he refers to them as legends (67). He also claims, equally incredibly, that Christians claimed they gained power by “pronouncing the names of demons” or via magic and incantations (53, 98), in spite of the extremely strong historic Christian stance taken against anything whatsoever that was even remotely related to demonic or occultic material. Some of these comments cause one to wonder about Celsus’s own sources, or whether he had much accurate information at all. As mentioned elsewhere regarding many other critics, while data on early Christianity is examined with scrupulous attention, Celsus sometimes seems like he required very little information at all other than any old comment from an unbeliever that either favored the pagan reports or disfavored Christian teachings, miracle claims, and so on before he repeated the material.

Celsus, On the True Doctrine, 53–54, 57, 59–60, 64–69, 98–99. Hoffmann provides additional details on these particular critiques by Celsus (36, 129–30, 140), which were also common fare for the Jewish leaders in Jesus’s day. A prominent work a few decades ago was Morton Smith’s Jesus the Magician: A Renowned Historian Reveals How Jesus Was Viewed by People of His Time (New York: HarperCollins, 1978).

Celsus, On the True Doctrine, 57–58. Hoffmann relates that the name “Panthera” may be a play on the Greek term for virgin (parthenos) in Matt 1:23 (129n14).

Celsus, On the True Doctrine, 59, also 54.

Celsus, 54–55, 59–60, 67, 69, 95, 106, 112–16. It is quite curious here that Celsus admits his own view that these pagan personages themselves or their so-called supernatural accomplishments are all legends (67) and that he belittles their religious followers, calling them “sniveling” and “gullible” (54). Yet on the other hand, he also knows that Jesus really lived in history and that Christians offer actual historical evidence for some of Jesus’s supernatural events, unlike the pagan legends. After all, like the Jewish leaders of Jesus’s time who accused Jesus of doing his miracles by the power of Satan, Celsus admits the actual occurrence of Jesus’s miraculous events, at least in some supernatural sense. Given these data, it is unclear whether Celsus simply does not recognize the difference in quality between the Christian and the pagan cases or if he indeed does recognize the contrast but is not “showing his hand” in order to put his best-sounding foot forward on behalf of his admittedly legendary pagan counterargument. Doubtless, these disparities do indeed produce a huge discontinuity between the two systems, explaining why the Christians that Celsus criticizes actually believe the way they do. The major and immediate question surely is not whether each side makes similar claims, and anyone who misses this point may have taken Celsus’s diversionary bait. Rather, the issue concerns who can show that their claims are correct. For if, based on evidential aspects, the Christian perspective is correct while the pagan alternative is incorrect, then the presence of comparative claims hardly matters. The Christian doctrines could very well follow, whereas the pagan doctrines would not be true (especially given Celsus’s view that these are illegitimate anyway) on account of the incongruity of the respective supernatural occurrences. Further, it would then be no wonder that Christians, who could ascertain the same thing that Celsus could, would accept neither the pagan accounts nor their doctrines, but would accept both in the case that their Christian examples were evidenced. So when Celsus admonishes Christians to “follow reason as a guide before accepting any belief” and to test doctrine (54), it sounds as if the Christians were already doing precisely that, whereas Celsus is the one who has not done so. In such cases, the tables seem to have turned here.

Celsus, 67–68.

Celsus, 132n49.

Celsus, 62, 65, 69, 115.

Celsus, 54, 60, 66–67, 71–72; cf. Hoffmann’s comments on 132nn42–48.

Again, as explained by Hoffmann in his “General Introduction,” 36.

Ehrman, New Testament, 2.

Ehrman, 198.

Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 290.

As commented several times, this depends on when the Gospel of Thomas was written and what view this writing took on the nature and form of Jesus’s appearances. The conclusion here was to place the Gospel of Thomas at about AD 140–160, with the majority of scholars, and while a less than bodily appearance view may be the Gospel of Thomas’s position, the latter seems difficult to prove from the sayings alone. But again, even taking a different view on the form of Jesus’s resurrection body does not mean that the Gospel of Thomas necessarily denied Jesus’s resurrection appearances if it were taught that Jesus truly did appear to his followers, which, again, cannot really be determined in this case.

Perrin, Judas Gospel, 24, 28–29, with the quotation on 28–29.

Perrin, 26 (emphasis added).

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 31, 83–84, 534–52, esp. 547–52; Wright, “Opening Statement,” in The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue, ed. Robert B. Stewart (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 19; Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 42.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, esp. 31, but cf. also 35, 38, 62–64.

It should be mentioned once again that few specific refutations, especially of Celsus’s charges, were addressed in detail in this chapter since naturalistic and other objections are precisely the theme of this entire second volume. As a result, much more sophisticated forms of these issues will be entertained and critiqued elsewhere in this volume.

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