Gnostic Gospels

V. Evaluating the Gnostic and Other Apocryphal Gospels

Mainstream media, whether in reporting or in special presentations, often present the Gnostic and other apocryphal gospels as authentic material from the earliest days of the church, even going back to the times of Jesus and the apostles. But as we evaluate these gospels, several points should be kept in mind.

1. These “gospels” are not true records of Jesus’ historical activities.
   Despite their titles, works like the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Thomas are not gospels of the sort found in the New Testament, since they do not offer a continuous narration of the deeds, teachings, passion, and resurrection of Jesus. The closest to a narrative is The Gospel of the Egyptians, a Gnostic salvation-history.¹¹ By and large these “gospels” do not attempt to anchor the writings in history, but instead offer dialogues that develop Gnostic teachings. Incidents from the life of Jesus are often clearly Gnostic propagandistic expansions and fictitious revisionings of the canonical Gospels, as in the cases sensationalized in the media of the accounts of Judas’ betrayal and Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene. In that sense, there is nothing new in the Gnostic gospels of any historical value for understanding Jesus’ life and ministry.
   
   
2. The titles and implied date of writing of these “gospels”
   are false.
   The apocryphal writings are almost exclusively pseudepigraphical—i.e., written in the name of the apostles or disciples, or having content concerning them, such as Mary, Thomas, and Judas. However, the ascription is completely false, as even critical or liberal scholars acknowledge. Bart Ehrman notes that the gospel allegedly written by Judas derives from at least a hundred years after the death of Jesus,¹² and so could not have any direct relationship to Judas. The same could be said for gospels that bear the name Philip or Peter or Thomas or Mary Magdalene. Although a very few scholars claim that the Gospel of Thomas is from the first century, the majority contend that Thomas and all of the other Gnostic gospels had no relationship to the apostles or other disciples and were not written until at least a hundred years later.
   
   
3. The theological agenda of these gospels conflicts with the revelation of the New Testament.
   To compare the Gnostic gospels to the canonical Gospels is like entering into an altogether different world. They not only lack apostolic identification, but their theological content is completely unlike the New Testament. They reinterpret Jesus’ ministry and teachings in the light of heretical Gnostic philosophy and beliefs. This explains why orthodox church fathers excluded them from the canon.
   
   Darrell Bock, professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, and visiting professor at Talbot each summer, provides one of the most recent evangelical treatments of the Gnostic and other apocryphal gospels in his book The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities (Nelson, 2006). He evaluates four central theological categories in which he demonstrates the vast difference of these “gospels” from New Testament and early church teaching.¹³
   
   
   1. The Nature of God and Creation.
      Gnostic belief contends that creation and the material world are subject to imperfection and evil, which creates a barrier between God, who is perfect, and the world, which is evil.
   2. Jesus: Divine and/or Human.
      This dualistic tension between Creator and creation in Gnostic thought inevitably led them to deny Jesus’ incarnation. Gnostics contended that Jesus had to be divine without true humanity, or else he was a created being.
   3. The Nature of Humanity’s Redemption.
      This dualism that is inherent to Gnostic thought not only posits a dilemma for Christology, but also creates a dilemma for human nature and for the redemption and salvation of humanity. With a disdain for material creation, these gospels contend for the spiritual salvation of the soul, not the ultimate redemption of all creation.
   4. Jesus’ Death: Knowledge, Sin, and Salvation.
      Gnostic belief also contends that salvation comes through knowledge or enlightenment, not through the act of atonement on the cross. So in Gnostic thought, Jesus shows the way to enlightenment, but does not provide a substitutionary atonement on the cross for our salvation.

Gary Burge, professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, comments on this analysis and says, “These four theological distortions departed from the teachings of the New Testament and are clearly foreign to it. No wonder orthodox teachers said that Gnostics had utterly compromised the faith to fit the cultural tendencies of the day.”¹⁴ He concurs with Bock that the hypothesis about rival “orthodoxies” within Christianity is exaggerated to the extreme, is implausible historically, and as we discussed above, neglects how the New Testament Gospels preserve a reliable apostolic witness back to Jesus himself.

VI. The Real Issue

Overall then, the Gnostic gospels have only minimal value for Christians today. They are primarily a reinterpretation of the canonical sayings and work of Jesus within the horizon of Gnostic thought. These writings are good mainly for showing how the canonical Gospels can became fodder for philosophical speculation in support of a deviant religious strain when they are not taken as God’s final Word to humans regarding salvation and life in him. We must learn from this, because recent deviant movements in contemporary cults have similar tendencies to distort God’s Word.

Much of the recent media fascination and scholarly buzz over the Gnostic writings is an attempt to reimage those ancient texts as a way of making them palatable to modern persons. But as Bock has said, “Such reimaging is a distortion of Gnosticism, the Christian faith, and early Christian history. It deflects attention from our real need to accept responsibility for our actions before a Creator God.”¹⁵

The Christian faith is not based on myth, pious legend, or philosophical-religious speculation. It is based on the historical person and work of Jesus Christ, the record of which is transmitted to the present through the canonical Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—anchoring our faith in the bedrock of established historical truth.

May our responsibility before God cause us to confess continually Jesus as our Savior and God and to live daily in the transformational reality of life in him.

Michael J. Wilkins (M.Div., Talbot; Ph.D., Fuller) is Dean of the Faculty and Professor of New Testament Language and Literature. Mike and his wife Lynne have two grown daughters and live in San Clemente where Mike surfs as often as he can.

Notes

¹ E.g., Zostrianos, Allogenes, Trimorphic Protennoia, Marsanes, and The Three Steles of Seth.

² E.g., The Paraphrase of Shem, The Apocalypse of Adam, Trimorphic Protennoia.

³ E.g., The Apocalypse of Peter, The Gospel of Philip, etc.

⁴ 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), 15-19, 30-34.

⁵ Gospel of Philip 63:32-64:10.

⁶ Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 249-50.

⁷ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/.

⁸ The National Geographic Society made an English translation and the Coptic text available on their website at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/document.html .

⁹ Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1.

¹⁰ Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.22.5; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.23.1-4.

¹¹ Alexander Böhlig and Frederik Wisse, “The Gospel of the Egyptians,” in The Nag Hammadi Library, 3rd rev. ed., gen. ed. James M. Robinson (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 208.

¹² Bart D. Ehrman, “Christianity Turned on Its Head: The Alternative Vision of the Gospel of Jesus,” in The Gospel of Judas: From Codex Tchacos, ed. Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst (Washington D.C.: National Geographic, 2006), 77-82.

¹³ Darrell L. Bock, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville: Nelson, 2006).

¹⁴ Gary Burge, “Jesus Out of Focus,” Christianity Today 50.6 (June 2006): 29.

¹⁵ Bock, The Missing Gospels, 213-214.