The Gospels that did NOT make it into the Bible with Prof Dale Martin (2021-08-26) #

0:00:01 good evening ladies and gentlemen and
0:00:03 welcome to blogging theology uh today we
0:00:07 continue the series of talks with
0:00:09 professor dale martin a distinguished
0:00:11 american new testament scholar who
0:00:14 taught at yale university for over 30
0:00:17 years so welcome back dale
0:00:19 thank you
0:00:21 and uh today we're going to be
0:00:23 discussing the gospels that did not make
0:00:26 it in to the new testament that
0:00:29 non-canonical gospel
0:00:31 is
0:00:32 the gospel of thomas
0:00:34 but there are others which we uh
0:00:36 hopefully will get around to discussing
0:00:38 including the gospel of peter gospel
0:00:40 mary the pros of evangelium of james but
0:00:43 we'll see how many we can or how many
0:00:44 dale can encompass in the time we have
0:00:48 and so we're going to start off by
0:00:49 looking at the famous gospel of thomas
0:00:54 and uh if you could uh dale just um tell
0:00:57 us a bit about it it's often called an
0:00:59 apocryphal gospel could you kindly
0:01:02 explain what is meant by this
0:01:04 term and say something also about when
0:01:06 it was discovered the language it was
0:01:08 written in what exactly it is is it like
0:01:11 the gospels we know with a story
0:01:13 beginning and end and the death and
0:01:14 resurrection and when do you think it
0:01:16 was likely to be written as well um so
0:01:20 quite a big menu there but uh if you
0:01:22 could take it away for stale and
0:01:24 introduce us to this fascinating subject
0:01:27 okay a lot of books are called
0:01:30 apocryphal new testament
0:01:32 or sometimes you'll find collections of
0:01:34 text published called the new testament
0:01:36 apocrypha
0:01:39 it's kind of a misnomer
0:01:41 the word apocrypha actually comes from
0:01:43 the greek for
0:01:44 oppo which means away and crouton which
0:01:47 means hidden
0:01:48 which if all you had was that word you
0:01:51 would think that it meant
0:01:52 documents that were written but hidden
0:01:55 away from most people like
0:01:57 kept in secret
0:01:59 only for a few people esoteric writings
0:02:02 but that's really not what it means when
0:02:04 it refers to these
0:02:06 documents in early christianity because
0:02:09 most of them were not um hidden away
0:02:12 they were quite readily available they
0:02:14 were
0:02:15 well known sometimes they were very
0:02:17 popular some of them were used in
0:02:18 liturgies
0:02:20 um
0:02:21 and that's why there came to be a debate
0:02:22 about whether they should be included in
0:02:24 the canon as the canon started to be
0:02:27 solidified in the third fourth fifth and
0:02:29 sixth centuries
0:02:30 um and
0:02:32 so they were not included in the canon
0:02:36 mainly because
0:02:37 uh
0:02:38 probably because they weren't as widely
0:02:41 used as matthew mark luke and john
0:02:43 matthew mark luke and john seems to have
0:02:44 been the most famous the most widely
0:02:46 used most respected
0:02:48 and people believe they were actually
0:02:50 written by matthew mark luke and john
0:02:52 we modern scholars don't believe that we
0:02:55 think these names were given to them in
0:02:56 the second century
0:02:59 but
0:03:00 they were the four that
0:03:02 became included in the bible
0:03:04 the others were simply kind of
0:03:06 they weren't included into like a
0:03:09 document like you would find them in the
0:03:11 modern period in fact the modern idea of
0:03:13 a collection called new testament
0:03:15 apocrypha
0:03:16 or apocryphal gospels that's a totally
0:03:20 modern invention that only came about in
0:03:23 the really the 20th century as
0:03:25 publishers started figuring out how to
0:03:27 market these things
0:03:29 to a general audience
0:03:32 because they were not hidden they were
0:03:35 openly written and openly circulated
0:03:38 the other thing is there's nothing sort
0:03:40 of
0:03:41 conspiratorial or nefarious sometimes
0:03:44 you get the idea
0:03:45 you know that oh these are were hidden
0:03:48 away by the church because they were
0:03:50 heretical or some well no most of them
0:03:52 are not that heretical they're you know
0:03:54 they're most of them are fairly orthodox
0:03:57 a few of them kind of seem a little bit
0:04:00 different from the orthodox you know
0:04:02 four canonical gospels but not that much
0:04:05 so apocryphal just is a modern term well
0:04:08 it's an ancient term but it's a modern
0:04:10 term we give in the new testament of
0:04:12 course
0:04:13 there's always been a reference to the
0:04:15 apocrypha
0:04:17 but those that refers to the selection
0:04:19 of documents in your bible there are
0:04:22 often in catholic bibles and
0:04:24 episcopalian bibles and eastern orthodox
0:04:27 bibles and they're often
0:04:29 either included in the old testament
0:04:32 interspersed among the other books
0:04:34 they're like
0:04:35 or they're included in an appendix
0:04:37 to the old testament
0:04:39 and labeled the apocrypha
0:04:42 those are not the same thing those are
0:04:44 jewish
0:04:45 documents written by jews
0:04:47 often in greek
0:04:49 sometimes in hebrew or aramaic
0:04:52 and then translated into other languages
0:04:54 and they they've been a part of
0:04:56 christian liturgy and tradition from the
0:04:58 very very beginning so this is
0:05:00 the apocrypha which refers to the jewish
0:05:04 uh
0:05:05 texts that didn't make it into the
0:05:07 protestant old testament they were in
0:05:10 the catholic old testament but not the
0:05:12 protestant old testament they were given
0:05:14 the name the apocrypha or the
0:05:16 pseudepigrapha or the
0:05:18 deuterocanonical deuterocanonical just
0:05:21 meaning secondary to the the canon
0:05:24 but they were always considered
0:05:26 perfectly orthodox
0:05:27 and in fact if you go to a catholic
0:05:29 church or an episcopalian church you'll
0:05:31 sometimes hear a reading
0:05:33 from
0:05:34 the maccabean literature for example or
0:05:36 judith or one of these books
0:05:39 that refers though to the jewish texts
0:05:42 that were included in english bibles
0:05:44 called the apocrypha but the new
0:05:46 testament apocrypha is a totally modern
0:05:49 invention of a category there was never
0:05:51 a collection before the 19th century
0:05:54 a cynic could conclude that uh this
0:05:57 confusion of the language was meant to
0:05:58 just to uh put off ordinary people from
0:06:00 even understanding this subject because
0:06:02 apocryphal gospels are not hidden
0:06:04 they're nothing like the the apocrypha
0:06:06 jewish writings these are just a modern
0:06:08 category invented by scholars which kind
0:06:10 of conceals more than reveals about the
0:06:12 truth of them well let me be a little
0:06:14 bit more cynical and say it was done for
0:06:16 marketing purposes i'm sure
0:06:19 uh you know it would sell more books
0:06:22 Music
0:06:24 it was apocryphal you know
0:06:27 which is a conspiracy and hiddenness
0:06:29 which of course is not not the case at
0:06:30 all but because
0:06:32 the ironic thing about this too though
0:06:33 is that the the one of these books which
0:06:36 actually calls itself
0:06:39 hidden
0:06:40 is the gospel
0:06:42 of thomas
0:06:44 it the very first line says these are
0:06:46 the hidden sayings yeah of jesus
0:06:50 and that's because that book did
0:06:53 set itself out as being
0:06:55 sayings that jesus
0:06:58 quietly gave to thomas
0:07:01 as his
0:07:02 main chosen apostle
0:07:04 and then thomas passed on those sayings
0:07:08 and so it's a gospel it's not a gospel
0:07:10 like the synoptic gospels matthew mark
0:07:12 and luke or john uh either and then
0:07:15 there's no narrative there's no life of
0:07:17 jesus there's no death of jesus there's
0:07:19 no resurrection of jesus it's just jesus
0:07:23 and you almost get the idea that this is
0:07:25 happening after his resurrection
0:07:27 and it's it's really part of this
0:07:30 there's a diet there's a
0:07:32 genre of books in the ancient christian
0:07:35 world there really are dialogues of the
0:07:38 savior
0:07:39 in which jesus after his resurrection
0:07:42 uh
0:07:43 speaks to his gathered disciples and he
0:07:45 gives them a lot of sayings that he
0:07:47 hadn't gotten around to giving them uh
0:07:50 while he was alive and it's like oh wow
0:07:52 wait a minute i forgot to tell you um
0:07:54 and
0:07:55 it's these dialogues of the savior kind
0:07:57 of books
0:07:59 and that's what the gospel of thomas is
0:08:01 so it doesn't look like
0:08:03 any of the canonical gospels because it
0:08:04 doesn't have a story
0:08:06 it's just a string of sayings but that's
0:08:08 not unusual we have the gospel of philip
0:08:11 we have the gospel of truth
0:08:13 uh even the gospel of mary which has a
0:08:15 little bit of dia narrative is mainly
0:08:18 mary
0:08:20 uh speaking to the disciples about
0:08:22 things that jesus told her you know
0:08:25 alone so
0:08:27 the one thing though about the gospel of
0:08:28 thomas is that it does
0:08:30 sell itself
0:08:31 as being a special
0:08:34 hidden gospel that was delivered to
0:08:37 thomas to deliver to the disciples to
0:08:39 deliver to the faithful christians
0:08:42 um
0:08:43 so
0:08:43 that's the one exception of these is
0:08:46 that thomas actually does call itself
0:08:48 apocryphal
0:08:49 in the sense of hidden but most of them
0:08:51 are not
0:08:53 so it's a it's not like the gospels
0:08:55 we're familiar with like the gospel of
0:08:57 luke which starts off with the birth of
0:08:58 jesus or the conception the birth his
0:09:01 ministry his death is resurrection this
0:09:03 is just a list of 114 sayings and you
0:09:06 can google them you can read them for
0:09:07 yourself online
0:09:09 there's no storyline it's just jesus
0:09:11 said this jesus said that jesus said the
0:09:13 other some of the saints which will come
0:09:15 to to my to my eyes were quite shocking
0:09:17 and may be shocking to other people as
0:09:20 well
0:09:21 um but so that strangely even called a
0:09:24 gospel it's just because that's
0:09:26 misleading as well they're just a list
0:09:27 of sayings but you're saying there are
0:09:29 other gospels that are similar in nature
0:09:31 in structure and form to the gospel of
0:09:33 thomas
0:09:34 yes well you have to remember that the
0:09:36 we get the word gospel from the greek
0:09:38 word juan galleon which means just the
0:09:41 good news
0:09:42 so if an ancient writer called his book
0:09:45 the euangelion the good news of jesus
0:09:49 he didn't necessarily mean the genre
0:09:52 that we take as a narrative form of the
0:09:55 life of jesus right it just meant the
0:09:57 good news of jesus
0:09:59 and so it was a generic term enough
0:10:03 that it could honestly be given um to
0:10:06 these books
0:10:08 even though the person who titled that
0:10:10 and most of the time these books weren't
0:10:12 given a title by the person who wrote
0:10:14 them they were given titles later
0:10:16 um
0:10:17 but uh you know it would it wouldn't be
0:10:19 sneaky to call these things
0:10:22 you know the good news of jesus
0:10:25 because they were
0:10:27 uh
0:10:28 good news according to the authors
0:10:31 okay
0:10:32 so what do they tell us about and this
0:10:35 is a question i'm interested in what do
0:10:37 they tell us about the historical jesus
0:10:39 are these sayings just all kind of made
0:10:41 up and really we can't as historians as
0:10:44 people today who want to understand more
0:10:45 about the historical jesus whatever we
0:10:46 mean by the term historical jesus i know
0:10:49 dale you've written a lot about
0:10:51 the nature of historiography what it
0:10:53 means to speak of the past and so on but
0:10:55 just using very loose
0:10:57 um everyday language now uh in terms of
0:11:00 the jesus as he was 2000 years ago do
0:11:03 you think do they give us any
0:11:05 information from a historical point of
0:11:07 view about who jesus really was for the
0:11:10 historian
0:11:11 i think that almost all of them don't
0:11:14 um most of them were written in the
0:11:16 second century or later
0:11:19 i think if there's any of them that may
0:11:22 be used to get to actual historical
0:11:25 sayings of jesus the gospel of thomas is
0:11:27 the only one really
0:11:29 because if you just look at certain
0:11:32 sayings in the gospel of thomas
0:11:34 now this is kind of controversial
0:11:36 because
0:11:37 some of the sayings are just bizarre
0:11:39 like if a lion eats a man then the man
0:11:42 eats the lion or the lion you know and
0:11:44 then you're going now what does that
0:11:45 mean so there are lots of sayings in the
0:11:47 gospel of thomas that are just
0:11:49 befuddling
0:11:51 and i think that that's because you have
0:11:53 to be a member of the community
0:11:56 to interpret these things properly
0:11:59 and they do express i think a lot of
0:12:00 them express a certain a certain early
0:12:03 christian sectarian gnostic view of life
0:12:06 which is uh you know not the same as
0:12:09 what came to be called
0:12:10 catholic christianity
0:12:12 um
0:12:14 so the idea that god is
0:12:16 is all of being and you are a small part
0:12:19 of being and jesus is this spark that
0:12:22 comes out of god and blows upon the
0:12:24 spark of your spark
0:12:26 uh that's your little divine spark and
0:12:28 that helps you move your spark up into
0:12:31 the spark of the almighty the god the
0:12:33 all eternity the entirety
0:12:35 so
0:12:36 the gospel of thomas has obviously been
0:12:38 influenced by that kind of theology
0:12:40 which is a highly platonic
0:12:43 um
0:12:44 kind of theology it's also influenced by
0:12:47 stoicism
0:12:48 and its philosophical idea there are
0:12:50 many gods so there are lots of gods and
0:12:53 some forms of gnosticism lots of angels
0:12:55 that have divine status
0:12:58 um and you kind of the gnostic christian
0:13:01 has to battle
0:13:02 his way through those different
0:13:04 beings to get up to the divine god
0:13:07 the fire the plarama the fullness the
0:13:10 entirety
0:13:12 so thomas clearly has been influenced
0:13:15 by that kind of those kinds of ideas
0:13:18 which is why i wouldn't say it's written
0:13:21 early in the first century um like the
0:13:24 scholar crosson
0:13:26 um you know he would like to place
0:13:27 around the year 60 or something so that
0:13:29 it
0:13:30 before the gospel is in the new
0:13:31 testament exactly
0:13:33 exactly
0:13:34 i don't think that's the case i think it
0:13:36 if you read it carefully it looks more
0:13:38 like this author
0:13:40 knew of the traditions of the gospels in
0:13:43 the bible and and echoes them and
0:13:46 sometimes quotes them but sometimes just
0:13:48 kind of gives them a different spin
0:13:51 but
0:13:52 this goes to this idea of what's more
0:13:54 primitive
0:13:55 um there are although other
0:13:58 sayings in thomas
0:14:00 that actually scholars would say you
0:14:02 know that looks older and what we mean
0:14:05 is that it looks like the historical
0:14:07 jesus could have actually said this
0:14:11 and the
0:14:12 the
0:14:13 versions that we have in our canonical
0:14:15 gospels are more elaborated christian
0:14:19 interpretations of the saying so just
0:14:21 one very good example
0:14:23 is um
0:14:26 the
0:14:27 uh
0:14:28 the parable of the seed and the sower
0:14:31 in thomas
0:14:33 uh which is in
0:14:35 uh saying nine
0:14:37 right um
0:14:38 and
0:14:39 if you read just read that it just
0:14:41 really is jesus just telling you the
0:14:43 parable
0:14:45 now take that and put it next to mark
0:14:47 which is our earliest gospel
0:14:50 mark immediately after jesus tells you
0:14:52 the parable the seed the sower went out
0:14:54 to sow seed and some of the seed fell
0:14:56 here and so the seed fell here and some
0:14:57 of these seed fell here that's it
0:15:00 yeah in thomas
0:15:01 mark says well this is what jesus later
0:15:04 took his disciples alone and they said
0:15:07 what the hell did that mean and jesus
0:15:09 explains the parable to them but his
0:15:11 explanation doesn't really fit the
0:15:12 parable it sounds more like
0:15:15 a later allegory of the parable that
0:15:18 someone later would have come up with to
0:15:20 explain the meaning of the parable
0:15:22 and so
0:15:23 that is the one situation where i
0:15:26 believe
0:15:27 thomas actually has
0:15:29 a more a primitive version of the
0:15:33 parable now i think this is useful for
0:15:35 the historical jesus for a couple of
0:15:36 reasons number one i think since thomas
0:15:40 probably knows the other gospels but
0:15:42 he's not copying them out hand by hand
0:15:45 you know matthew and luke actually had
0:15:46 mark in front of them
0:15:48 yeah
0:15:49 and they were copying mark's stuff out
0:15:52 and they were changing words here and
0:15:53 there so we could so we can look at
0:15:55 matthew and luke say well why did they
0:15:56 change this word to that word or why did
0:15:58 they and we can get an idea what matthew
0:16:00 and luke wanted to do by their
0:16:02 editorializing of mark
0:16:05 thomas doesn't seem to be editorializing
0:16:08 on the gospels he just seems to be
0:16:10 giving you sayings
0:16:12 that he's gathered maybe from the
0:16:15 gospels maybe from other sources
0:16:18 clearly some of these things of jesus
0:16:20 are from different sources than we have
0:16:22 in the canonical gospels
0:16:25 and the sa this the parable the sower is
0:16:27 one of these cases where it looks like
0:16:29 the parable as it occurs in thomas is
0:16:32 older
0:16:34 than the version of the parable in the
0:16:36 canonical gospels which tells you like i
0:16:39 said one jesus probably did say this
0:16:41 parable
0:16:43 it comes from lots of different places
0:16:45 and here it's told without any
0:16:47 editorializing it's just told so you're
0:16:50 suggesting the the gospel of thomas has
0:16:52 been through several different editions
0:16:54 uh then you get a very early primitive
0:16:56 one which seems to reflect possibly what
0:16:58 the historical jesus might have said
0:17:00 even predating so this is where crosston
0:17:02 would agree with you in that sense but
0:17:05 there's also the later gnostic uh uh
0:17:08 gnostic type um platonizing sayings as
0:17:11 well which are clearly later than jesus
0:17:13 by definition because he wouldn't have
0:17:15 said that so we're looking at something
0:17:17 that had different layers historically
0:17:18 is that right yes
0:17:20 but i
0:17:21 i hesitate to talk about them as
0:17:23 different layers of
0:17:25 different periods of actually written
0:17:27 texts
0:17:28 that kind of assumes our modern idea
0:17:30 that anything worth
0:17:32 saying was written
0:17:34 right um
0:17:35 and i i assume that it's much more
0:17:37 likely that a lot of the things in
0:17:39 thomas were part of oral tradition
0:17:41 right they were sayings that would
0:17:44 circulate among churches among
0:17:45 christians
0:17:47 people telling stories around a campfire
0:17:49 saying
0:17:50 um you know
0:17:51 you don't assume that when
0:17:54 you know your nephew tells the story of
0:17:56 little red riding hood
0:17:58 to his little bitty uh
0:18:00 sister around a campfire that he's
0:18:03 reading it out of something do you
0:18:05 no
0:18:06 and
0:18:07 that's more the way uh
0:18:09 literature when we think of literature
0:18:11 that's more the way literature occurred
0:18:13 in the ancient world
0:18:14 so i would assume that
0:18:16 the gospel of thomas is a collection of
0:18:19 stories
0:18:20 that some of which were written and he
0:18:23 may have read them someplace but i don't
0:18:25 have any evidence that he's copying them
0:18:27 out hand by hand
0:18:30 which i do think we have evidence for
0:18:31 that for other writings in the new
0:18:33 testament
0:18:34 no absolutely thomas just doesn't look
0:18:36 like that so but i do think that it
0:18:38 shows
0:18:39 layers of tradition
0:18:41 layers of oral tradition
0:18:44 and
0:18:45 that means that there are sometimes
0:18:48 when you can take something from thomas
0:18:50 and i think it gives you a better
0:18:52 example of what the historical jesus may
0:18:54 have actually said
0:18:57 but it's very debatable because
0:19:01 we don't have any test
0:19:03 except our ear you know our ear says oh
0:19:05 god that just sounds
0:19:07 that sounds more
0:19:08 primitive that sounds less elaborated
0:19:12 well that's a judgment call isn't it
0:19:15 sure
0:19:16 can i challenge you on that if i have
0:19:18 the temerity to do that there's another
0:19:20 saying uh saying number 12
0:19:23 in my copy of the gospel of thomas that
0:19:25 has jesus
0:19:27 the disciples said to jesus we know that
0:19:29 you will depart from us who is to be our
0:19:31 leader jesus said to them wherever you
0:19:34 are you are to go to james the righteous
0:19:36 for whose sake heaven and earth came
0:19:39 into being now my challenge there is in
0:19:42 this sense this sounds to me really
0:19:44 primitive because we know uh
0:19:46 historically speaking that james was
0:19:49 indeed the head of the jerusalem church
0:19:51 it's multiply attested
0:19:53 even in the new testament you get that
0:19:54 sense in acts and in galatians but it's
0:19:57 mentioned by eusebius and many other and
0:19:59 several other writers as well that this
0:20:01 seems to be uncannily accurate as as a
0:20:04 description of at least james's status
0:20:07 right at the beginning of the jerusalem
0:20:10 church as the head or the first bishop
0:20:13 or the first leader of the church
0:20:15 so um would that not be a a good
0:20:18 historical reason other than just sort
0:20:20 of it's sounding ancient for us to give
0:20:22 that uh pericope that lo that word um
0:20:25 some historical credibility is an actual
0:20:28 saying of jesus perhaps i would say i
0:20:31 don't think it
0:20:32 gets much merit as a saying of the
0:20:35 historical jesus
0:20:37 merely because we just don't have much
0:20:39 other evidence
0:20:41 it's definitely
0:20:43 historical i think that jesus appointed
0:20:45 12 close disciples and that one of the
0:20:48 reason he chose 12 was because this was
0:20:50 an eschatological apocalyptic
0:20:53 reason these are going to be the 12
0:20:55 judges of the 12 tribes of reconstituted
0:20:59 israel well of course there was there
0:21:01 weren't 12 tribes of israel in jesus day
0:21:04 so that makes perfect sense though that
0:21:07 jesus as i think he was an apocalyptic
0:21:09 prophet he thought the 12 tribes would
0:21:11 be brought together again
0:21:13 either by himself or by some messiah if
0:21:16 he didn't think himself was the messiah
0:21:18 and i think that's an open question
0:21:20 so we know there were 12 we know that
0:21:23 peter james and john
0:21:25 were central to that 12 because they
0:21:27 just occur in so many different contexts
0:21:30 now peter is singled out as the main one
0:21:34 in the gospel of mark
0:21:36 and in matthew and luke
0:21:39 although in matthew peter comes across
0:21:41 as a little more embarrassed
0:21:43 than in some of the others
0:21:45 um
0:21:46 in the gospel of john some people think
0:21:48 the gospel of john was written by the
0:21:51 apostle john well there's no evidence
0:21:52 for that
0:21:53 but
0:21:54 the text says it was
0:21:56 the given by the beloved
0:21:59 the
0:22:00 you know the love disciple but we don't
0:22:02 know who that was but there is at least
0:22:04 evidence there that there was one of the
0:22:06 disciples that some
0:22:08 version of early christianity
0:22:11 honored as being especially beloved and
0:22:14 it wasn't peter
0:22:16 it was somebody else one of the other
0:22:18 12.
0:22:20 so we've got some
0:22:23 some
0:22:24 traditions surrounding peter we have
0:22:26 some traditions surrounding the beloved
0:22:28 disciple which become traditions
0:22:30 surrounding john
0:22:31 yeah
0:22:32 and then we have some traditions
0:22:33 surrounding james
0:22:35 when was it likely that these different
0:22:37 traditions grew up
0:22:39 in the early church really
0:22:41 it's when you had
0:22:43 uh
0:22:44 you know circles developing around these
0:22:47 guys
0:22:48 and each
0:22:50 promoting their own
0:22:51 favorite disciple
0:22:53 so i would say that james
0:22:56 as the brother of jesus
0:22:58 and you know he was supposedly
0:23:00 not just the brother of jesus but he was
0:23:03 supposedly the twin brother of jesus
0:23:06 this is where we get
0:23:07 didymus judas thomas
0:23:10 yeah uh you know is
0:23:12 so james is uh considered one of the
0:23:15 brothers even maybe of jesus if you put
0:23:18 him that close to that and so um
0:23:21 and clearly in acts we see that james is
0:23:23 the head of the church in jerusalem so
0:23:26 that's a tradition and that's important
0:23:27 because the rot the author of acts is
0:23:30 not really out to promote james so much
0:23:32 no
0:23:33 his favorite is peter
0:23:35 yeah
0:23:36 uh which shows by the way he he makes
0:23:38 peter the one the first one to take the
0:23:40 gospel to gentiles
0:23:42 with the cornelius story
0:23:44 well if he you know james he he
0:23:47 sticks over there in jerusalem and james
0:23:49 has his place in jerusalem
0:23:52 he's the head of the jerusalem church
0:23:54 so i would say that it's that period
0:23:57 after the death of jesus that a saying
0:23:59 like that arises right
0:24:02 because there's just there's not any
0:24:04 other
0:24:05 comparable evidence that i would say
0:24:07 comes from
0:24:08 the historical jesus to support
0:24:11 designating james and especially notice
0:24:14 james the righteous
0:24:17 that's a title
0:24:19 it is man
0:24:21 you know
0:24:22 uh who was the church father when maybe
0:24:24 it was eusebius who told the story that
0:24:26 james was so pious
0:24:29 that they called him camel knees
0:24:32 because he spent so much time on his
0:24:34 knees in prayer that his knees developed
0:24:37 calluses like a camel's yeah in the
0:24:39 temple yeah yes
0:24:41 yeah no you're right no that's a good
0:24:43 point yeah the other saying that really
0:24:44 struck me in the gospel of thomas is the
0:24:46 very last one the 114th and i just read
0:24:49 it in the translation i've got simon
0:24:51 peter gamer back to simon peter here
0:24:53 said to him let mary leave us for women
0:24:56 are not worthy of life
0:24:58 jesus said and of course you expect here
0:25:00 to jesus to rebuke peter but no he says
0:25:03 i myself shall lead her in order to make
0:25:06 her male so that she too may become a
0:25:09 living spirit resembling you males for
0:25:12 every woman who will make herself male
0:25:15 will enter the kingdom of heaven
0:25:17 when i first read that i couldn't
0:25:19 believe what i was reading um because he
0:25:21 goes he goes against so much of the
0:25:23 portrait of jesus we see in luke for
0:25:25 example he was a friend of
0:25:27 women and sinners and the outcasts and
0:25:29 here we have someone who is the opposite
0:25:32 really who uh it's to exterminate women
0:25:35 they cease to be women who become men to
0:25:36 become uh part of the king what do you
0:25:38 make of that saying by the way i mean
0:25:40 how on earth does someone come up with a
0:25:42 saying like that well i think that's
0:25:44 very common actually in fact i think
0:25:45 your reaction to say that exterminates
0:25:47 women is very much a modernist uh kind
0:25:50 of reaction
0:25:52 because in the ancient world
0:25:54 uh the idea of uh androgyny
0:25:57 was everywhere which is the idea that
0:26:00 the the original atom
0:26:03 uh contained both male and female
0:26:05 in him
0:26:07 and it was only when god separated out
0:26:09 the female part that split apart
0:26:12 the divine androgen
0:26:14 and so
0:26:15 you know
0:26:17 people have interpreted the
0:26:19 in christ there is no male and female
0:26:22 and my very respected professor um
0:26:26 teacher
0:26:27 wayne meeks wrote a very famous article
0:26:30 called the androgen
0:26:32 um
0:26:33 it's not the title completely but
0:26:35 androgen is in there
0:26:38 and he argued that this is a baptismal
0:26:40 formula in paul's day
0:26:42 which
0:26:43 assumed that before the fall
0:26:46 of humanity
0:26:49 human beings had both male and female
0:26:52 within them
0:26:53 and it was only in the fall that these
0:26:55 things came separated and in your
0:26:57 baptism they come back together so every
0:27:00 baptized christian is now male and
0:27:02 female
0:27:04 joined together as an androgynous being
0:27:08 so it's not at all unusual for jesus to
0:27:11 say
0:27:12 and i do think that jesus is
0:27:14 that's a little bit of a put down of
0:27:16 peter
0:27:17 in that passage in that jesus doesn't
0:27:20 put him down necessarily he just one up
0:27:23 some
0:27:24 he just says well you know yeah you
0:27:26 you're just seeing things through the
0:27:28 lights of right now
0:27:30 you know you're only looking at
0:27:32 private parts but you have to see things
0:27:35 in the light of the resurrected body
0:27:39 which is now a fully joined body
0:27:43 in which male and female will
0:27:45 be brought back together in a totally
0:27:47 unified whole
0:27:49 human being
0:27:50 just like god is totally unified whole
0:27:53 human being
0:27:54 now i also disagree though with some
0:27:57 people who want to say that's a very
0:27:59 egalitarian statement
0:28:01 um
0:28:02 because i i want to say no
0:28:05 it doesn't
0:28:07 it raises women
0:28:09 to the level of men and the resurrection
0:28:13 but it doesn't but it does so because it
0:28:15 makes them
0:28:16 androgynous
0:28:18 it makes them male
0:28:19 but male is now assumed to be
0:28:22 to include female in it
0:28:25 so it doesn't make feminine and
0:28:26 masculine equal
0:28:29 it basically and this is the way ancient
0:28:30 androgyny works as i've tried to show
0:28:33 it brings the feminine up into the
0:28:36 masculine
0:28:37 masculinity absorbs
0:28:40 femininity into itself it's sort of like
0:28:43 feminine the feminine and ancient ideas
0:28:46 was simply uh
0:28:48 a minus sign it was lack
0:28:51 masculinity was a plus sign
0:28:55 and when you bring femininity into
0:28:57 masculinity
0:28:59 you sort of just take away
0:29:01 the
0:29:03 imperfection that femininity represents
0:29:07 into the perfection
0:29:09 that masculinity represents
0:29:12 but only masculinity as it exists in an
0:29:15 eschatologically purified form
0:29:19 so i think that's what's going on at
0:29:21 that last thing and
0:29:24 it is a bit of a put down for peter
0:29:27 um because it just shows that peter
0:29:30 doesn't really understand completely
0:29:33 how things are going to work
0:29:35 but it's certainly not
0:29:37 raising
0:29:38 mary as a woman
0:29:42 it's raising mary
0:29:44 as an androgynous being
0:29:48 which is not necessarily super positive
0:29:50 for
0:29:52 any feminist movement
0:29:54 no no it's much more ambiguous than that
0:29:57 can i just ask finally about this gospel
0:29:59 who is jesus for thomas the the author
0:30:02 he doesn't strike me as a divine being
0:30:06 or certainly not god but i'm not very
0:30:08 clear who he is really he's some kind of
0:30:10 sage wisdom teacher gnosticy type person
0:30:14 or is even the messiah in
0:30:17 in the gospel of thomas do you have any
0:30:19 thoughts on that who jesus is
0:30:21 i think he is um
0:30:24 in some sense a messiah but not the sort
0:30:27 of
0:30:28 uh
0:30:29 jewish messiah who
0:30:31 saves the jews from the romans and
0:30:33 establishes a
0:30:35 an earthly kingdom of israel
0:30:38 or kingdom of god
0:30:40 he's more than anything a savior and a
0:30:43 redeemer and a revealer
0:30:45 so
0:30:46 uh he is i think divine or a part of the
0:30:50 divine but the thing about gnosticism is
0:30:52 that the divine is everywhere
0:30:55 so you know he jesus is
0:30:59 the quintessential spark of the divine
0:31:01 that reveals the nature of the divine to
0:31:03 all other human beings
0:31:05 in order to enlighten en enlighten their
0:31:08 own little bit of divinity
0:31:10 right i mean it's called gnosticism
0:31:13 meaning knowledge
0:31:15 for a reason it's that
0:31:17 your salvation comes from your knowledge
0:31:19 well what does your knowledge
0:31:21 mean
0:31:22 you have to in fact there's a poem in
0:31:24 the ancient world you have to know
0:31:26 where you came from
0:31:28 where you are where you're going
0:31:31 what birth is and what rebirth is
0:31:36 or what death is
0:31:37 where where are you you're in the mud of
0:31:40 the earth
0:31:42 your your corporeal body is just mud
0:31:46 but where did you come from the real you
0:31:48 is the spark of the divine
0:31:50 which came down from the highest god
0:31:54 where will you go that spark will be
0:31:57 liberated from the mud
0:31:59 and go back to the divine fire
0:32:02 so what is birth birth is the casting of
0:32:05 your spark into the mud it's not
0:32:07 something to be celebrated
0:32:10 we're stupid for celebrating birthdays
0:32:13 according to the gnostics that's when we
0:32:15 got imprisoned
0:32:16 but what is death death will be the
0:32:19 release of the spark to go back to the
0:32:21 divine fire
0:32:23 so
0:32:24 your birth is death and your death is
0:32:26 birth
0:32:28 um and so
0:32:30 so it seems that there will be no place
0:32:32 then for the death and resurrection in
0:32:34 the in the sense it's traditionally
0:32:35 understood in the church then um
0:32:38 in in that kind of world view because
0:32:40 the the rebirth doesn't happen through
0:32:43 physical resurrection it happens through
0:32:45 this gnostic scheme that you described
0:32:48 it it doesn't happen through what you're
0:32:50 calling physical resurrection exactly
0:32:53 but they did have ideas of death and
0:32:55 resurrection
0:32:57 and and different gnostics had many
0:33:00 different ways of interpreting that they
0:33:02 took the story of jesus
0:33:04 you know
0:33:05 uh seriously
0:33:07 but they allegorized it to some extent
0:33:10 right so some of them believed that
0:33:13 at his death
0:33:15 jesus the human person the human body
0:33:19 was on the cross
0:33:20 and christ
0:33:22 which was the divine figure who came
0:33:23 down and united with jesus
0:33:26 um
0:33:27 in order to be with the revealer to
0:33:29 humankind
0:33:31 the christ figure
0:33:33 left jesus
0:33:35 at the
0:33:36 crucifixion and that's how they
0:33:38 interpreted
0:33:39 um some sayings in the gospels you know
0:33:46 my god my god you know you've forsaken
0:33:48 me
0:33:49 well why would jesus say that on the
0:33:51 cross is because the human jesus
0:33:53 realizes that the divine jesus is
0:33:55 leaving him
0:33:57 Music
0:33:58 or you know
0:34:00 into your hands i commit my spirit
0:34:03 well that shows that the divine part of
0:34:06 jesus is going up into heaven
0:34:10 and leaving
0:34:11 and in fact some gospels
0:34:13 uh again apocryphal gospels non-canon
0:34:16 gospels
0:34:17 have christ
0:34:19 up in heaven laughing
0:34:21 at the crucifixion
0:34:24 and these are the famous stories of the
0:34:26 laughing christ the gospel of peter is
0:34:29 it that has that story in it
0:34:32 um i'm
0:34:33 Music
0:34:35 i hesitate to say in case i'm
0:34:37 misremembering but there are several
0:34:39 occurrences in different places and
0:34:40 maybe the gospel of peter might be one
0:34:42 of them but um the idea is that the
0:34:44 divine jesus
0:34:46 uh left the human jesus because of
0:34:50 course everyone knows god can't suffer
0:34:52 because god suffering in the ancient
0:34:55 greek meant change possible in latin
0:34:58 or you know pathos in greek and
0:35:01 that means change well god can't change
0:35:05 so
0:35:06 god cannot suffer
0:35:08 so any suffering that you see
0:35:10 in
0:35:11 the gospels has to be reinterpreted
0:35:14 so that it's not the divine part of
0:35:16 jesus that's suffering it's only the
0:35:19 human part so that
0:35:20 gnostics had very different ways of
0:35:22 interpreting this
0:35:24 but they kind of
0:35:26 um held on to the idea
0:35:28 that uh
0:35:30 christ couldn't die
0:35:34 okay
0:35:35 this is a good time to move on to uh
0:35:37 some of the other gospels i mentioned
0:35:39 some of them already the gospel of peter
0:35:41 and mary but there's also the
0:35:42 proto-evangelium of james the infancy
0:35:44 gospel of james uh what would you want
0:35:47 to take a pic and discuss what you think
0:35:49 is next most significant and you have a
0:35:52 text i understand that you're um reading
0:35:54 from is that
0:35:56 the book that you're looking at on the
0:35:58 apoc for gospels
0:36:00 well i was when i was quoting things i
0:36:02 was quoting uh
0:36:04 from um
0:36:05 bart ehrmann
0:36:07 um and
0:36:09 paul pleasure
0:36:10 yep thank you the apocryphal gospels
0:36:14 it's a more recent collection and i've
0:36:15 also used a lot just when i'm dealing
0:36:17 with thomas
0:36:19 or the other nog commodity coptic texts
0:36:22 uh my former colleague bentley layton
0:36:26 the gnostic scriptures
0:36:29 is that the original gnostic scripture
0:36:30 there looks as if it's being dug up from
0:36:32 the sands of egypt yeah exactly that's
0:36:35 from my library you know buried in my
0:36:38 that's from 1986
0:36:40 i think when bentley actually published
0:36:42 it it's his own translation of
0:36:44 uh a lot of what he considered gnostic
0:36:47 texts
0:36:48 including the nagamati texts and some
0:36:51 also that survived in greek or latin or
0:36:53 other kinds of things so
0:36:55 um
0:36:55 that's kind of an artificial collection
0:36:58 because you know there was no such thing
0:36:59 as a gnostic bible
0:37:01 in the ancient world but bentley kind of
0:37:04 put together
0:37:05 uh the nog mainly the nog kamadi text
0:37:09 which had just been discovered in the
0:37:10 50s
0:37:11 in egypt and contained all these coptic
0:37:14 writings uh many of which were early
0:37:17 christian writings that we had we knew
0:37:19 some of them existed
0:37:20 but we just didn't have like the gospel
0:37:22 of thomas it was the first time we had a
0:37:25 complete text of the gospel of thomas
0:37:27 but the gospel of philip the gospel of
0:37:29 truth
0:37:31 tons and tons of other
0:37:33 um things that came out
0:37:35 all kind of discovered in the tomb
0:37:37 of an egyptian monk
0:37:41 so
0:37:43 so those were the things i've been i
0:37:45 think probably the most important thing
0:37:47 to say about the others probably just by
0:37:50 fame
0:37:52 is the infancy gospel of thomas
0:37:55 because that's very different from the
0:37:56 gospel of thomas and shouldn't be
0:37:58 confused
0:37:59 this is a text
0:38:01 it's actually a series of texts that
0:38:03 circulated in different kinds of formats
0:38:06 and were very famous in the mid
0:38:08 middle ages the medieval period
0:38:11 a lot of them
0:38:12 maybe even came about then
0:38:15 at the earliest they were
0:38:17 maybe some of them were written in the
0:38:19 second century
0:38:21 um ads so the 100s
0:38:24 150 175 200
0:38:28 they're
0:38:29 very famous because they get depicted a
0:38:31 lot in art
0:38:33 and the history of christianity it's
0:38:35 basically sort of if someone is sitting
0:38:37 and saying what was jesus like as a
0:38:39 child
0:38:40 um and so it's they're fun stories
0:38:43 they're just great things you know he he
0:38:45 makes a he's a little boy making
0:38:47 mud pigeons in a river bank and
0:38:51 some jew the jews are terrible in these
0:38:53 these are very anti-semitic anti-jewish
0:38:56 documents
0:38:57 some jew comes along and says you
0:38:59 shouldn't be making pigeons because it's
0:39:01 the sabbath and you're working on the
0:39:03 sabbath
0:39:04 and so jesus claps his hands and the
0:39:07 pigeons the clay pigeons all fly away
0:39:10 um
0:39:11 evidence is destroyed
0:39:13 of his sin
0:39:15 um or you know he has a teacher who says
0:39:18 you shouldn't make an alpha like that
0:39:20 you should make a you lean make an alpha
0:39:22 and a beta and a gamma uh and jesus says
0:39:25 you learn the alpha and i'll teach you
0:39:27 the beta and strikes the teacher dead
0:39:32 so he kills a bunch of his teachers
0:39:34 but then usually by the end of the
0:39:37 text
0:39:38 somebody comes along and says jesus what
0:39:39 are you doing you're doing and so he
0:39:41 raises all of his teachers back up to
0:39:43 the life again
0:39:44 it's basically sort of like wonder jesus
0:39:47 like what would jesus have been like as
0:39:49 wonder boy
0:39:51 but it's very famous and they're
0:39:53 wonderful stories i love to teach them
0:39:55 because it just shows how i just call it
0:39:58 early christian popular literature
0:40:00 how did people imagine this
0:40:02 um
0:40:03 but certainly uh
0:40:06 you mentioned the
0:40:07 uh proto-evangelium of james
0:40:10 yeah or the pre-it's called the
0:40:13 pre-gospel of james
0:40:15 or sometimes it's called the
0:40:16 proto-evangelium of the yacobi
0:40:18 jacob or jacoby is the
0:40:21 latinized version of james
0:40:24 these are actually stories that were
0:40:26 super super famous in the ancient world
0:40:29 and the medieval world yeah and in fact
0:40:31 you find them in art all over the place
0:40:34 but they don't really depict
0:40:37 uh jesus
0:40:39 but they show
0:40:40 mary they described mary's birth was
0:40:44 also a miraculous birth
0:40:46 she's not born as from a virgin her
0:40:48 mother elizabeth
0:40:50 has sex with her husband
0:40:52 but um
0:40:53 but mary is born without sin
0:40:56 and this leads to the doctrine you know
0:40:58 of um
0:41:02 the immaculate conception i used to
0:41:05 tease my students and say okay what does
0:41:07 the immaculate conception refer to
0:41:10 and the protestants would all think oh
0:41:11 it refers to the
0:41:13 yeah yeah the virgin birth and then no
0:41:15 no no no no the catholics
0:41:19 i met don't
0:41:19 catholics who confused the two as well
0:41:21 it's shocking you know yeah
0:41:23 which is the virgin birth i'm thinking
0:41:25 have you not paid any attention to the
0:41:27 first infallible declaration in the 19th
0:41:29 19th century of anyways
0:41:31 yeah
0:41:35 the gospel of james um
0:41:38 really shows sort of
0:41:40 the miraculous birth of mary without sin
0:41:43 which of course means that therefore she
0:41:45 doesn't have original sin and therefore
0:41:47 she she's available as a conduit to give
0:41:50 birth to jesus who's born without sin so
0:41:53 uh but it tells lots of miracle stories
0:41:57 about mary her father
0:41:59 uh her mother there's a famous story
0:42:02 where salome
0:42:04 is this jewish woman who
0:42:06 she comes when
0:42:09 mary gives birth to jesus
0:42:11 and
0:42:13 she says well
0:42:14 they're not supposed to be married yet
0:42:15 joseph and mary had sex and they're in
0:42:18 the person the woman the midwife says no
0:42:21 no no
0:42:22 she's still a virgin
0:42:24 and solemnly says well that's ridiculous
0:42:26 you know
0:42:27 and salami says i won't believe that
0:42:29 until i test it myself and she puts her
0:42:31 fingers into mary's womb
0:42:34 to test
0:42:36 whether mary is still a virgin and her
0:42:38 whole hand shrivels up
0:42:41 and causes her great pain
0:42:43 and so then she confesses you know that
0:42:46 mary was a virgin
0:42:48 even after the birth of jesus she was a
0:42:50 virgin and so so these are stories that
0:42:53 become super famous
0:42:55 so
0:42:56 that uh the proto-evangelium or
0:42:59 proto-gospel of james is really
0:43:01 important and i think the gospel of
0:43:03 peter is really important but more for
0:43:05 the resurrection scene
0:43:07 um
0:43:08 yes this is where the direction of
0:43:10 saying in peter is really
0:43:12 blows blows your mind you've not heard
0:43:13 about it before so what happens in
0:43:15 peter's gospel of the resurrection of
0:43:18 jesus well you do have that scene you
0:43:20 were talking about where jesus and jesus
0:43:22 and christ are kind of separated so
0:43:24 christ doesn't really suffer
0:43:26 in the gospel of peter um
0:43:29 but
0:43:31 in all the gospels as we have
0:43:34 they have an empty tomb but they don't
0:43:36 actually show
0:43:37 the physical resurrection of jesus
0:43:40 well whoever wrote the gospel of peter
0:43:42 just said just decided well we've got to
0:43:44 take care of that problem we can't leave
0:43:46 that unsolved and so
0:43:48 it has the role the stone rolled away
0:43:51 everybody falls down you know with the
0:43:52 angels and then out of the tomb of jesus
0:43:56 three figures
0:43:58 come out marching
0:44:00 two of them whose heads reach all the
0:44:02 way up to the heavens
0:44:04 those are the two angels who are
0:44:06 accompanying jesus one on each side
0:44:08 but the head of the third person went on
0:44:11 the other side of heaven they went above
0:44:14 heaven now you might have to remember
0:44:15 that in the ancient world people didn't
0:44:17 think of the sky as
0:44:19 unlimited they thought
0:44:21 heaven or the sky refers to a blanket
0:44:25 that's why we call it the firmament
0:44:27 something firm
0:44:30 and so
0:44:31 jesus's head split through
0:44:34 the firm part of the sky
0:44:37 so that when he comes walking out
0:44:39 of the tomb his head is even above the
0:44:42 sky you couldn't even see his head of
0:44:43 course it's above the sky
0:44:45 and then as a cross comes walking out
0:44:47 with him
0:44:48 well this is the bit you love it's my
0:44:50 favorite bit is when this cross comes
0:44:52 out i mean this is i'm just begging for
0:44:54 some kind of um i don't know hollywood
0:44:56 depiction i think it'd be amazing it is
0:44:58 it's great you'd like to see it done in
0:45:00 you know like uh
0:45:02 cinema cinema vision or something you
0:45:04 know
0:45:05 special effects yeah and you know it
0:45:06 says that i think the cross says
0:45:09 have you preached or a voice says have
0:45:12 you preached
0:45:14 to the souls of the dead
0:45:17 because the referring to the tradition
0:45:18 that
0:45:19 between his death and his resurrection
0:45:21 jesus went down into hades
0:45:24 and he preached all the lost souls the
0:45:26 people who hadn't had the chance to hear
0:45:27 the gospel and therefore he saved people
0:45:31 who were in hades and had not had the
0:45:33 chance to hear the gospel and so the you
0:45:35 know have you preached to the souls of
0:45:38 the dead and and you know the voice yes
0:45:41 yes yes so it's affirms that jesus
0:45:44 has gone down and preached in hades
0:45:46 um
0:45:47 during his sleep um you know in the tomb
0:45:51 so
0:45:52 and that became the gospel of peter
0:45:54 became um
0:45:56 famous too there's some um
0:46:00 there's the acts of peter also but
0:46:03 there's some art uh there's a big
0:46:05 painting in the yale university art
0:46:08 gallery
0:46:09 that has
0:46:10 a a
0:46:12 painting of mary and you know the child
0:46:15 and saints
0:46:16 it's like a bishop another thing but
0:46:18 around the sides of the painting are
0:46:20 these cartoon characters and cartoon
0:46:23 squares
0:46:25 that show
0:46:26 uh images of the life of peter
0:46:30 and some of them are
0:46:31 from the bible like the angel who lets
0:46:34 peter out of prison
0:46:36 in the gospel in the acts
0:46:38 but some of them are not
0:46:40 so one of them the last one is the
0:46:42 crucifixion
0:46:43 of peter upside down
0:46:46 alongside the decapitation of paul
0:46:49 uh which of course is not in the bible
0:46:51 but it's part of christian tradition
0:46:53 so and there's another one that uh
0:46:56 shows
0:46:57 peter battling
0:46:59 with um
0:47:00 Music
0:47:02 who's that magician
0:47:04 um
0:47:07 zach
0:47:08 not simon mayes
0:47:10 yeah simon yes it's simon migus so peter
0:47:14 has a uh
0:47:15 a battle like a harry potter type
0:47:19 battle in the air
0:47:20 with simon magus and simon magus falls
0:47:23 to earth and breaks his legs
0:47:26 um
0:47:27 you know and peter is declared or peter
0:47:30 turns
0:47:31 so simon magus turns uh
0:47:35 uh
0:47:36 makes there's a smoked tuna in the
0:47:38 marketplace
0:47:40 and simon magus makes the smoked tuna
0:47:42 come alive
0:47:44 and then jesus out doesn't by making the
0:47:46 smoked tuna jump up and swim away
0:47:50 so
0:47:52 there's this that painting in in uh from
0:47:55 the middle ages
0:47:57 depicts a bunch of these scenes of peter
0:47:59 so which comes from the gospel of peter
0:48:01 or the acts of peter i'm curious it
0:48:04 wasn't gospel peter ever seen by any
0:48:05 group of christians as canonical for
0:48:07 them obviously it's not in our bibles
0:48:09 was it ever seen as scripture do you
0:48:11 think by any christians
0:48:12 i don't know um
0:48:16 i would if it does come from the second
0:48:19 century which i think a lot of these do
0:48:23 you know what actually counted this
0:48:25 canonical was all up in the air then
0:48:27 oh yeah yeah yeah and what what
0:48:30 what really canada's canonical was what
0:48:32 were you allowed to read publicly in
0:48:34 church
0:48:35 that is what what could you say stand up
0:48:37 in front of the church and read as part
0:48:39 of scripture
0:48:41 and of course the old testament was all
0:48:42 in no problem with that
0:48:44 and even the old testament apocrypha you
0:48:46 know that was all in so you could read
0:48:48 judith or maccabees or these sorts of
0:48:50 things
0:48:51 but what could you read of early
0:48:53 christian literature
0:48:55 now we know very early that
0:48:57 paul's letters or at least
0:48:59 a selection of paul's letters
0:49:02 could be read in church
0:49:06 and i think
0:49:07 very quickly matthew became very popular
0:49:10 matthew seems to be in the most popular
0:49:12 gospel and that's i think why it's first
0:49:14 in the canon yeah
0:49:17 but it's just popular because it was
0:49:18 geographically popular it was popular in
0:49:20 a lot of different places
0:49:22 yeah but i think in the around one the
0:49:24 year 150 i would be very surprised if
0:49:27 you entered a church and did not hear
0:49:30 some of these
0:49:32 what became non-canonical texts you read
0:49:36 i'd be very surprised if you didn't hear
0:49:38 the
0:49:39 parts of the gospel peter read
0:49:41 right so it's certainly possible just as
0:49:43 an aside this is not this is off topic
0:49:45 but in the codex sinaiticus which is in
0:49:47 the british library or the bulk of it in
0:49:49 the british library in london uh you
0:49:51 have the epistle of barnabas and the uh
0:49:53 the shepherd of hermes as part of the
0:49:57 that text that manuscript uh does that
0:50:00 mean they were part of the new testament
0:50:02 according to the compilers of that codex
0:50:04 yes
0:50:05 yeah yes because
0:50:06 when you really go onto the website at
0:50:08 the british museum and you read about
0:50:09 that it's kind of ambiguous oh they're
0:50:11 not in the new testament these texts
0:50:12 right i want to know if they were in the
0:50:14 new testament for the the compilers of
0:50:15 that codex and that that's the question
0:50:18 is not very clear but yeah the answer is
0:50:20 yes yes um that
0:50:22 you
0:50:24 um
0:50:25 that's why when we talk about the
0:50:27 history
0:50:29 of the canon
0:50:31 you can
0:50:32 one big piece of evidence is actually
0:50:36 the codices the codexes
0:50:39 what they because we have the books and
0:50:41 they were sewn together
0:50:43 the way i've explained this to students
0:50:45 is that
0:50:46 you know before you had a codex
0:50:49 which is the book as we know it
0:50:51 sewn together pages all you had was
0:50:53 scrolls just like jews still have
0:50:56 scrolls yeah by the torah yeah
0:50:58 um
0:50:59 so when you went
0:51:01 to church or to the synagogue
0:51:03 you would go to a box in fact it was
0:51:05 called an ark
0:51:06 and uh
0:51:08 you would just pick out a scroll
0:51:11 and undo the scroll it's like when jesus
0:51:13 and luke you know
0:51:15 jesus goes to the synagogue and they
0:51:17 hand him the scroll of isaiah
0:51:19 now it probably was not a scroll of all
0:51:21 of what we think of as isaiah
0:51:23 because all you know 60 something
0:51:25 chapters of isaiah
0:51:26 were more than a scroll can contain
0:51:29 so a scroll could contain maybe
0:51:32 40 chapters from isaiah which is one of
0:51:34 the reasons we have scholars will talk
0:51:36 about first isaiah and second isaiah and
0:51:39 third isaiah
0:51:40 because we think that
0:51:42 isaiah as the book we have it grew
0:51:45 over time
0:51:47 yeah and part of the reason is that you
0:51:49 couldn't put
0:51:51 all of it so that's why we also have
0:51:52 first kings and second kings
0:51:55 and you know in some of the greek bibles
0:51:57 it was first second third and fourth
0:51:59 kings
0:52:01 and others they separated that in the
0:52:02 first king second kings you know
0:52:05 first chronicles satan chronicles or you
0:52:07 know nehemiah ezra and nehemiah you know
0:52:10 uh would be together but they would be
0:52:12 separate because you couldn't put all of
0:52:14 ezra and nehemiah on one
0:52:16 scroll so
0:52:21 what what counted as scripture was
0:52:23 whatever happened to be in the box at
0:52:25 your church
0:52:28 and you go pick out a scroll
0:52:30 and unroll it and read
0:52:33 and it was only with the codex when they
0:52:35 started
0:52:37 cutting up scrolls
0:52:39 and sewing them together
0:52:42 and putting them between
0:52:43 two books and a lot of these are huge
0:52:45 you know if you've seen
0:52:47 some of these early christian codices in
0:52:49 the new testament they're big because
0:52:51 they're made out of parchment that is
0:52:53 leather
0:52:54 and there's an animal they're made out
0:52:56 of dead animal skin yeah
0:52:57 that's what parchment is the way they're
0:53:00 modern bibles are away from pages you
0:53:02 know exactly
0:53:04 fat animal skins
0:53:06 and that's why these big books was that
0:53:08 big so so what happens was
0:53:10 uh what you decide to put between the
0:53:13 covers of a book started becoming
0:53:16 something like a criterion
0:53:18 for what you considered scripture
0:53:21 interesting
0:53:22 and so then also they made started
0:53:24 making canon lists
0:53:27 uh one of the earliest is the muratorian
0:53:30 cannon
0:53:31 we think that there's big debate about
0:53:33 whether it comes from 200 or 400.
0:53:36 i like to think of it as coming from
0:53:37 around the year 200
0:53:39 and it includes like the shepherd of
0:53:41 hermas and
0:53:44 some of these other books
0:53:45 as just part of its
0:53:47 list
0:53:48 and that doesn't say necessarily
0:53:51 this is the canon of the new testament
0:53:55 it's just implied that these are the
0:53:57 things in fact some of these lists will
0:53:58 say
0:53:59 these are the things that are okay to
0:54:01 read
0:54:02 in church
0:54:04 these are the things that are forbidden
0:54:06 to read
0:54:08 and these are the things that are okay
0:54:10 to read for your own benefit
0:54:13 but not necessarily in church
0:54:17 and so
0:54:19 you had it took centuries and centuries
0:54:22 for this to develop but that's that's
0:54:24 why you have different canon lists that
0:54:26 might list barnabas
0:54:29 or
0:54:30 what i find interesting about what
0:54:31 you're saying is is that the the raw
0:54:33 technology the the physical way that
0:54:36 these texts were preserved and accessed
0:54:39 actually had an influence on the way
0:54:42 that they were received as scripture and
0:54:44 canonized you mentioned the transition
0:54:45 from scroll to codex for example and
0:54:49 the way the codex kind of made it more
0:54:51 uh listable but more kind of a single
0:54:54 point of reference and that's a list a
0:54:57 canon which what canon means a kind of a
0:54:58 rule became much more applicable but
0:55:00 well if you have an arc as you call it
0:55:02 you have well you can pop things in and
0:55:04 out and there's more kind of fluid
0:55:06 perhaps than a physical text uh in one
0:55:10 form in a codex so
0:55:12 that's especially important for i think
0:55:15 what we would call as the kind of the
0:55:16 fringes of the canon the things around
0:55:18 the edges so
0:55:20 i don't think this would be applicable
0:55:22 to the gospels because we have people in
0:55:27 the second century the most famous is
0:55:29 irenaeus
0:55:30 who's writing around the year 180.
0:55:33 and he makes it very clear there are
0:55:35 four gospels
0:55:37 just four
0:55:39 there are others you can read in your
0:55:40 own free time
0:55:42 but these are the four
0:55:44 and he says why do we have four gospels
0:55:46 because there are four corners of the
0:55:47 earth
0:55:48 yeah i always found that rather than
0:55:50 persuasive but uh
0:55:52 well irenaeus was the kind of guy who
0:55:55 would use any argument on a sunday you
0:55:57 know
0:56:00 so you're right they're not persuasive
0:56:02 but it shows that at least by the year
0:56:05 180 he's actually trying to exclude
0:56:08 things like the gospel of thomas
0:56:11 um
0:56:12 he doesn't want all these other gospels
0:56:15 he wants matthew mark luke and john
0:56:18 and so
0:56:19 the four gospels become kind of
0:56:22 central
0:56:24 um
0:56:25 not not i don't mean to say that they
0:56:27 won out that there was no disagreement
0:56:29 there was certainly disagreement and
0:56:31 there were certainly you know places
0:56:33 maybe especially in syria or the east or
0:56:36 india where the gospel of thomas was
0:56:39 maybe the most famous gospel of all
0:56:41 because thomas was supposed to be the
0:56:42 apostle who took christianity to india
0:56:46 um
0:56:48 i mean i've had i've had students in my
0:56:50 classes
0:56:51 from india come up to me they were
0:56:53 christians raised in india
0:56:55 and they they would hear this and they'd
0:56:57 say well but
0:56:59 thomas founded my church
0:57:02 wow you know i'd say well yes that's
0:57:05 well you don't believe that
0:57:07 well
0:57:08 i said probably not
0:57:12 but i said i know i know it's an
0:57:14 important thing for the indian church
0:57:17 yeah
0:57:18 gosh that's extraordinary just like
0:57:20 peter it's important for catholics that
0:57:22 peter founded the church at rome
0:57:25 yes yes
0:57:27 um well we've uh we've come up to uh an
0:57:30 hour and i'm conscious that um we could
0:57:32 talk about this for several more days
0:57:35 and still not get uh not exhaust the
0:57:38 subject is there anything else you want
0:57:40 dale you want just to say perhaps in
0:57:41 conclusion about this and anything at
0:57:43 all that to
0:57:45 uh
0:57:45 you know help us understand what's going
0:57:47 on with these apocryphal gospels
0:57:50 well i think the thing is that we can we
0:57:52 can't write the end of the story and we
0:57:54 won't be able to wrap the end of the
0:57:55 story we didn't get around to talking
0:57:56 for example about the gospel of mary
0:57:59 um which really was only made public in
0:58:02 the nine in the 1900s
0:58:04 um it's not it it was ancient um
0:58:08 uh but you know it wasn't discovered
0:58:11 until later and then it was kind of
0:58:12 hidden away in libraries
0:58:14 and then it was kind of lost in world
0:58:16 war one
0:58:18 and the nazis and german scholars trying
0:58:21 to you know
0:58:23 edit it and publish it and it really
0:58:24 wasn't for the middle of the 20th
0:58:26 century that the gospel of mary became
0:58:30 well known
0:58:31 um now it's not a huge find it's a it's
0:58:34 a gospel that basically like many of
0:58:36 these sayings gospels it's like after
0:58:38 jesus is resurrected and mary is
0:58:40 standing around with the disciples and
0:58:42 she tells things that jesus had taught
0:58:44 to her and so it's again a string of
0:58:46 sayings
0:58:48 uh so it's like the gospel of thomas the
0:58:50 gospel of philip
0:58:52 uh the gospel of truth it's a it's a lot
0:58:54 like several of these second century
0:58:56 gospels which don't have story
0:58:59 and narrative as much as they do just
0:59:01 sayings of jesus
0:59:03 but you know it's it's kind of gotten a
0:59:06 lot of attention
0:59:07 uh in the last few decades because it's
0:59:09 supposed to be merry after all
0:59:11 uh
0:59:13 and so
0:59:14 so there are a lot of these and the
0:59:16 thing is you know
0:59:19 the end of this book will not be written
0:59:24 so it's an open story because who knows
0:59:26 what discoveries lay literally underfoot
0:59:29 in the coming years
0:59:31 what uh
0:59:32 what about the tomb of a monk may be
0:59:34 discovered containing further gospels
0:59:37 who knows what they will say as
0:59:38 discoveries have been made in the last
0:59:39 hundred years so you're absolutely right
0:59:41 it must remain an open story we can't
0:59:43 know that we know everything about this
0:59:45 subject far from it yeah
0:59:46 it's amazing that you know if you were
0:59:48 living in 1940
0:59:50 and you had all this great german
0:59:53 and british scholarship on the bible and
0:59:55 everything you would have thought oh
0:59:56 well it's all been done
0:59:58 yes
0:59:59 people used to make fun of me when i say
1:00:01 i was going to
1:00:02 graduate school to study new testament
1:00:04 and they'd say well that's done
1:00:06 you know that's ridiculous there's
1:00:08 nothing new to be said
1:00:10 and i would say well maybe that's true
1:00:12 but you know i'm okay
1:00:14 um and the thing is you know but you
1:00:16 think if you were in 1940 you wouldn't
1:00:18 know about the dead sea scrolls
1:00:20 discovered in the 40s you know huge you
1:00:24 wouldn't know about the nog commodity
1:00:25 texts which all these gnostic texts um
1:00:28 you know you wouldn't even know about
1:00:30 half of the stuff that i spent
1:00:32 my time in grad school pouring over
1:00:35 which had only been discovered since
1:00:37 1945 and 1950.
1:00:40 it reminds me of a story i've got a book
1:00:42 at home in in london published in the
1:00:44 1890s
1:00:45 uh it's about physics and the the author
1:00:47 there professor of physics somewhere in
1:00:49 england or whatever saying confidently
1:00:51 we now know uh based on newtonian
1:00:54 physics basically all that we need to
1:00:56 know about the laws of physics yeah he
1:00:59 was writing this literally a couple of
1:01:01 years before einstein came along i know
1:01:05 and revolutionized the whole thing and
1:01:07 it was just a serene confidence he was
1:01:09 telling his readers that we now we
1:01:10 basically got it susp we got it all
1:01:12 mapped out how wrong can you be and it's
1:01:16 just you know in this in your subject in
1:01:18 your expertise and physics it's the same
1:01:20 old story
1:01:21 never pronounce the end of the story
1:01:23 it's always never never never closed the
1:01:25 book
1:01:27 it's a it's true and uh and then you
1:01:30 know einstein of course einstein's ideas
1:01:32 were so radical that he didn't believe
1:01:33 them himself he hasn't got some
1:01:35 mechanics he thought that is coming
1:01:37 right he said it can't be right you know
1:01:41 and it took decades after einstein
1:01:43 uh before einstein was proved right
1:01:47 yes
1:01:48 contrary to his own views
1:01:50 he's got quite uh quite bizarre
1:01:52 just about very finely people may be
1:01:54 wondering about the little creature
1:01:55 that's hanging for its dear life and the
1:01:57 piano behind martin and i'm told that
1:02:00 that is monk monk and he's quite okay
1:02:03 and he's a
1:02:04 comes from the kind of africa
1:02:05 african-american sock puppets kind of
1:02:08 creation but um
1:02:09 he's been a silent witness to all of
1:02:11 this so um
1:02:14 he's my main inspiration
1:02:16 right
1:02:18 oh dear you shouldn't say that publicly
1:02:19 people don't take your seat
1:02:22 um no um so it's a very colorful
1:02:25 addition to this so
1:02:26 thank you dale i don't know if we will
1:02:28 ever have you again to talk on about
1:02:29 perhaps the letters of paul but i'm not
1:02:31 going to presume this entirely we'll
1:02:33 we'll talk about it some other time but
1:02:34 there is more to discuss
1:02:36 uh
1:02:37 anyway but uh we'll leave that for now
1:02:40 and uh thank you so much dale martin for
1:02:42 your expertise and your time and your
1:02:44 your humor and um
1:02:46 and until next time thank you very much