The Genre of the Apocryphal Gospels
The Genre of the Apocryphal Gospels
The apocryphal gospels seem concerned to fill in missing details of Jesus’ life,16 and are closer in genre to novels than to biographies.17 Novels generally reflected the milieu of their readership more than that of their characters,18 and this characteristic fits these apocryphal gospels’ cultural horizons. Thus the apocryphal gospels did not even need to draw extensively on earlier gospels,19 although there are some parallels.20
Ancient readers knew the genre of novel, but in the overwhelming majority of cases could distinguish between historical and fictitious narratives.21 Although this distinction was probably somewhat less obvious once the apocryphal works became widely circulated beyond their original audiences, there is little indication that they offered any serious competition with the four gospels ultimately deemed canonical. Distinctions in genre revealed distinctions in purpose. Even when historical works have incorrect facts they do not become fiction, and a novel that depends on historical information does not become history;22 what distinguishes the two genres is the nature of their truth claims.23 (We address the contrast between novel and history further in our following chapter.)
Most scholars recognize that the apocryphal gospels and acts bear various similarities to ancient novels.24 The apocryphal acts include “faked documentation and other devices used in ancient fiction to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude.” 25 One scholar points out such apocryphal works’ “large ration of the absurd,” such as “talking dogs and competitive displays of magic, sky travels and a miracle competition (Acts of Peter), obedient bed-bugs (Acts of John), baptized lions (Acts of Paul),” and “cannibals (Andrew and Matthew among the anthropophagoi).”26 Needless to say, many are enjoyable to read.
In contrast to Luke’s Acts, the apocryphal acts date from the period of the heyday of the Greek romances.27 At least some of them, most obviously the Acts of Paul, appear dependent in content on Luke’s Acts.28 Just as later apocryphal gospels diverge significantly from Palestinian and Semitic traits in the early strata of the Jesus tradition, so these apocryphal acts often diverge much further from the undisputed epistles’ portrait of Paul than Luke’s Acts does.29
Most novelistic gospels and acts were theologically compatible with the majority of the church of their day, and simply appealed to the popular imaginations of many Christians eager to fill in gaps of what was known about Jesus’ earthly life. Still, their narrative form came too close to canonical forms for some critics’ comfort, and not everyone took well to composing fiction under the guise of fact: the church defrocked the well-meaning presbyter in Asia Minor who compiled the Acts of Paul. (And it should be admitted that, from a literary perspective, these early Christian novelists were hardly forerunners of John Bunyan, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, J. R. Tolkien or Anne Rice.)
Nevertheless, a work can be harmless or even edifying and widely recommended, without meeting the ancient church’s criteria for canonicity. (To my knowledge, no one has recommended C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia for canonization, at least not officially.) Many early churches viewed their gospels as “memoirs” of Jesus;30 novels might be good or bad, but they were not memoirs. Simply because someone wrote a religious work, even in the first century, would not automatically invite early Christians to treat it as Scripture.
The church felt that its canon’s Gospels had to stem from those who knew Jesus directly or through close association with those who did, to guarantee accurate information. While scholars debate the authorship of the four Gospels today, most place all four within the first century (within three to six-and-a-half decades of the events they narrate). Works that appeared suddenly at a later time, claiming a previously “hidden” tradition of apostolic authorship (such as some apocryphal gospels do), would naturally be suspect. When these later works contradicted the long-circulated, publicly preserved traditions of Jesus’ teachings, as gnostic sources did, they could hardly command a widespread hearing outside their own circles.