Mixing Types of Gospels
Mixing Types of Gospels
A minority of scholars have argued that apocryphal and gnostic gospels reflect a form earlier than that of the canonical Gospels and similar gospels no longer extant.95 Working from the apocryphal gospels, for example, Helmut Koester has suggested that they reflect genres earlier than our canonical Gospels,
. . . such as sayings collections, aretalogies (miracle collections), and apocalypses. As a result, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas should be seen in a trajectory from Q, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas from collections like the Johannine Semeia source, and the Apocryphon of John from revelations like the Apocalypse of John.96
In principle, such genre comparisons are not objectionable (regardless of whether or not they are correct). Any attempt to designate these later works as early based on such genre considerations, however, would reflect an illegitimate inference. All the relevant genres coexisted in the first century, so chronological inferences on the basis of such genres are unwarranted.
Some have compared even the canonical Gospels with a kind of writing called aretalogies (narratives celebrating marvelous deeds of heroes).97 Aretalogies do have some features in common with some gospel narratives, but our ancient examples are normally brief narrations or lists of divine acts, hence do not provide the best analogies for the Gospels as whole works.98 These narratives might support the hypothesis of early circulated miracle-collections, as Koester thinks (though they differ even from apocryphal gospels). But aretalogy was not even a clearly defined genre,99 and, as we have already noted, the apocryphal gospels generally fit the genre of novels.
The Gospel of Thomas probably does intentionally follow the ancient form of a sayings collection; but acknowledging this form does not require us to retroject gnosticism into earlier Christian sayings collections, or to imply that Thomas must be as early as “Q.” First, as we have noted, sayings collections are as old as Israelite and other ancient Near Eastern proverbs and also extend to Greek collections of philosophers’ witticisms.100 We thus cannot date a work based simply on its “sayings” genre.101 Sayings collections hardly disappeared after the first century! The rabbinic collection Pirqe Abot and the Syrian Sentences of Sextus in fact date to the later period likely for the Gospel of Thomas.102
Moreover, as we have also noted, it is not clear that Q excluded all narrative (the matter is debated). Although Q is probably primarily sayings (some with narrative frames), it probably includes some narrative (especially in Matt 3:1-12// Lk 3:7-17; Matt 4:1-11//Lk 4:1-12; Matt 8:5-13//Lk 7:2-10);103 we will address the issue of Q more fully below. Of course, some sayings sources could include narrative frames (even when simply, “so-and-so said”) when needed. Reasonably assuming that Q was largely a sayings source, however, would still not clarify the relationship between these works and Q. Since various sayings sources existed, there is no reason to assume that gnostic sayings collections made Q their model unless they can be shown to draw substantially from Q material. In fact, they appear to have had access to “Q” material only the way we do — through Matthew and Luke. (As we have noted, even the Gospel of Thomas, the possible exception, includes sayings that include Matthew’s or Luke’s editing. Later works are even far more problematic than Thomas.)
We should also observe that the sayings form does not invite us to assume that the sayings genre was opposed in principle to narrative gospels, as some scholars have argued.104 Both forms could exist simultaneously without representing competing “communities.” Ancient collections of sayings of famous teachers did not preclude an interest in the deeds of those teachers; reports of sages’ teachings frequently incorporated accounts of their lives or settings for their sayings;105 and Ahiqar’s wisdom sayings and narrative were probably already combined more than half a millennium before the Gospels were written. 106 Most of the proverbs in the Old Testament collection called Proverbs are traditionally attributed to Solomon (cf. Prov 1:1; 10:1; 25:1); but it hardly follows that those who followed this wisdom-genre therefore rejected the narrative reports concerning Solomon in 1 Kings (cf. 1 Kgs 4:32). Ancient rhetorical experts also addressed how to combine sayings with narrative.107 Early Christian tradition and use of narrative genre were not likely isolated in a single stream; where Paul’s incidental use attests Jesus traditions, they attest both Q and Mark, and some of the Q material is more like Matthew whereas some is more like Luke.108 Historically, it is simply nonsense to pretend that writers and communities were limited to writing in a single literary genre.
While sayings collections, like narratives, could be either early or late, both the gnostic texts and their more “orthodox” second-century competitors are clearly later, expansive, and considerably farther removed from the Palestinian Jesus tradition than the canonical Gospels are.