Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Jewish and Christian (OT and NT) works included here. Where should Philo and Pseudo-Philo be placed?
What if a second century attempt to allegorize the Christian holy books had succeeded in the way early Christians allegorized the Jewish scriptures? Continue reading “The two-edged sword of Christian allegorizing”
Here it is folks, — with the scribal aid of St Archer, the modern church can finally sell the Jesus it has tried to explain is really behind the gospels all along: Continue reading “Gospel of Judas (Archer/Moloney) fantasy verses”
Loved this digest parody of the Archer – Moloney ‘Gospel of Judas’:
Check out John Crace’s “digested read” at the Guardian website.
The Guardian also has a more serious review here.
I have to confess I could not resist reading Archer and Moloney’s Gospel According to Judas — damn temptation! Continue reading “Archer and Moloney’s Judas Gospel still not quite right”
So the truth is out. Professor Francis Moloney and Jeffrey Archer tell us how the gospels were written.
Note: No eyewitnesses! No oral traditions! No historiography! Continue reading “How a gospel works: Judas reveals all”
Professor Francis Moloney is incensed that Dan Brown can get away with his Da Vinci Code nonsense without an equally popular rejoinder from orthodox scholarship, so has teamed up with convicted perjurer Jeffrey Archer to popularize the way gospels “really were written”. (See earlier posts in the Judas category.)
Nothing like the services of a convicted perjurer to get The Truth out there! Continue reading “Judas and the Devil take on Dan Brown”
Interview on the radio this morning again — 8.30 am EST. Or if you miss this live it will appear soon enough here. [Update: it’s now here with transcript and pod soon to follow.] Continue reading “Judas scholar and the devil again”
So leading Judas scholar Francis Moloney is hoping to preach the gospel of Jesus through the mind of Judas and the pen of Jeffrey Archer.
Moloney says he wants to get the gospel of Jesus out to more hearts and minds so wrote the first draft of a Gospel of Judas, leaving it for novelist and done-his-time Jeffrey Archer to polish up the final product. Continue reading “Judas scholar does deal with the Devil (Jeffrey Archer)”
The Acts of Paul show a remarkable series of affinities with the pastoral epistles, particularly 2 Timothy. There are differences as well, but they are the sorts of differences that one expects to find in stories repeated orally. Someone is labelled as a coppersmith, now was that Alexander or Hermogenes? Paul always teams up with “two’s”: now was it Demas and Hermogenes or Phylelus and Hermogenes in this particular scene? That sort of variation.
In both the Acts of Paul and 2 Timothy we find:
A full list of the differences and citations can be found online at Acts of Paul and the Pastoral Epistles.
Most commentators have concluded that the Acts of Paul draws on the Pastorals as a source for its narrative details. If so, as MacDonald discusses in The Legend and the Apostle, one is unable to explain the differences between the details in the Acts of Paul and 2 Timothy. Why the different names for the 2 missionaries who are undermining households by preaching the resurrection is a past event? for example.
The explanation that does explain both the similarities and the differences, and is consistent with the types of differences we find (mentioned above), and that is discussed in MacDonald’s book and in part sourced to Harnack in Hennecke’s New Testament Apocrphya, is that the author of the Acts of Paul was relying on oral traditions. MacDonald argues that the author of the Pastorals was likewise drawing on the same or similar oral traditions.
Historicity of canonical Acts?
One sometimes hears that evidence for the historicity of our canonical Acts lies in part in its accord with names, places and events in the “genuine Pauline epistles”. If the mere fact that names, places and events appear in two genres of literature by different authors is testimony to historicity, then the same argument would inform us that the Acts of Paul and Thecla is also historical. Unless one says that comparing the “genuine” Pauline letters with the Pastorals is “no fair”. 2 responses:
Given that the Slavonic Josephus appeared around the 11th or 12th centuries and without any known links to other church documents, what follows can be little more than speculation of course.
Two noteworthy features of The Gospel of Peter (link is to table of gospel comparisons) are:
Justin Martyr (link is to table of gospel narrative comparisons) of around 150 c.e. is interesting for appearing to know only the same gospel narratives:
The interesting connection of these early accounts with the Testimonium Flavianum in the Slavonic Josephus (scroll to section IV) is that here is provided a narrative explanation for these unusual depaertures from the canonical versions:
If, as seems likely, the Slavonic Josephus insertions derive from eastern christians removed from western orthodox controls, and this is the same area where the Gospel of Peter remained popular for many years, is it possible that we have in the Slavonic Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum a missing portion of the Gospel of Peter narrative?
Neil
What came first? Jerusalem or Galilee? (I’m not interested in the “contradictions” question as such but in the question from a “dialogue” perspective — what are the different theological debates presumably underlying these variations?)
Justin Martyr says that the resurrected Jesus instituted the eucharist, church orders, etc to his disciples in Jerusalem and from there they went out to the whole world preaching to the gentiles — just prior to the destruction of that city by the Romans. There is no hint of a Judas or an 11. 12 is the assumed number throughout.
Mark appears to say that the resurrected Jesus told his disicples to meet him in Galilee but they presumably stayed in Jerusalem (after having had the eucharist given them before his death, not after his resurrection)
Matthew has the disciples going to Galilee to meet Jesus and there the resurrected Jesus tells his disciples (even those who doubted?) to think back and remember what he taught them before his death and go out to the world preaching and converting.
John seems to have two endings: the first one has the resurrected Jesus deliver a commission to his disciples in Jerusalem; the second has him doing something similar in Galilee. (Not from Matthew’s mountain, however, but from a lakeside — c.f. Matthew’s Sermon on Mount with Luke’s Sermon on Plain??) Was this second a later editorial hand or was it the one author deliberately placing in apposition two traditions?
Luke has the Justin Martyr view but, if we regard him as the same author who wrote Acts, with a time delay built in to the time when Jerusaelem was destroyed.
Acts also has Jesus commanding his 11, then 12, to go out from Jerusalem throughout the world, but in the course of the narrative there is no real depiction of them doing this. One has to find ways of reconciling this command to the 12 with the activity of Paul while the 12 appear left in Jerusalem so much of the time.
The Nag Hammadi texts also reflect the different scenarios: scenes of Jesus in Galilee and scenes of Jesus in Jerusalem.
Does any of this relate to the Transiguration scene in Matthew, Mark and Luke being on a Galilee mountain?
Surely this question has been addressed in the literature. Damn not living near a major university library with the appropriate collection! What leads are there in the literature to follow up questions about the origins of these variant Galilee/Jerusalem traditions.
I know of works like Weeden’s and Kelber’s that argue Jerusalem is the place of the old and fading kingdom and Galilee represent the new (multi-racial) kingdom — but how does such a view explain the persistence of the Jerusalem trad for so long, even though to the “final” gospel, Luke, and repeated by Justin Martyr as if there is no alternative?
Help, someone, please! More questions to occupy me in the night and shopping queues….
Neil
As I continue to read Majella Franzmann’s Jesus in the Nag Hammadi Writings it is interesting to reflect how the distinctive themes of the gnostic texts overlap with themes of the strongest interest among scholars of the Gospel of Mark.
Markan scholarship is signposted by such studies as Wrede’s The Messianic Secret and Weeden’s Mark: Traditions in Conflict, as well as discussions around the gospel’s apparent adoptionist Christology. Wrede’s work attempts to explain why Jesus’ spiritual identity was to be kept secret and Weeden’s book looks at an explanation for the disciples being incapable of understanding their teacher. Kelber’s The Oral and the Written Gospel also argues that the whole of Mark was written as a grand parable.
These studies unexpectedly continue to echo in my head as I read Franzmann’s study. So the Jesus of among authors of the Nag Hammadi texts was:
I look forward to continuing this book and then the opportunity to write up more comprehensive notes, perhaps a grid, highlighting the prominent features of this “other Jesus”. I do not mean to imply that the author of Mark’s gospel borrowed or adapted his ideas from the gnostics responsible for these texts. No doubt orthodoxy and the simple fact that the originals of the Nag Hammadi texts are dated no earlier than the mid second century would make this impossible. But then I have yet to see any external evidence for the appearance of our canonical gospels that establishes a date much earlier. Ditto for the Pauline canon. And in that Pauline canon we read that that author was at odds with Christianities extolling “other Jesus’s” and “other gospels”. But these are just first-thoughts off the top of my head as I read through Franzmann. No doubt I will have time to reflect more deeply on all the evidence over the coming weeks. But I do find interesting the fact that the author of Mark’s gospel would not appear to be unaware of the sorts of concepts we also find among the Nag Hammadi texts. Or did those gnostic authors really allegorize Mark and a “historical” person with such unprecedented verve?
Neil
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Many detailed studies have been made of what Justin knew of the Sayings of Jesus but there have been fewer works discussing his understanding of the narrative of Jesus and the Church up till his own time. Since so many of the Sayings of Jesus fit well enough with the Sayings found in the Canonical gospels, and since there appear to be also a few narrative overlaps, it is widely held as a given that Justin knew of the canonical gospels.
I have doubts about this assumption, and I have expressed a few of my reasons on a new upload on my website. (I have not, however, discussed there some of the shortcomings of the studies of the Saying of Jesus in Justin — that is a future work.)
So now I have just added the next table. It was originally completed some years ago but hey, I need time to get some of these things out there.
Related post: Justin Martyr and the 2nd century gospel story
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Update 7th January 2007: See this thread at iidb for more info since I wrote the following.
Far from being a shock new find that erupted onto the world around Easter 2006 by the grace of National Geographic, the existence of the Gospel of Judas manuscript has been known to scholars since the early 1980’s. Before tracing in detail the history of this manuscript along with the interplay of shady peddlings and academic egos that have long kept it from general scholarly scrutiny till now, Robinson discusses the attitudes towards Judas found in the various early Christian writings down to popular understandings today. He points out how the original Christian textual treatment of the other apostles and family of Jesus was strongly negative but that they all eventually found a way to be rehabilitated. Robinson then posits that the ethics of the biblical account of the character of Judas are wanting by normal humane standards today, and that it is time that Judas likewise be finally rehabilitated. The discussion of the text follows. Robinson’s own experience with such manuscripts and personal knowledge of the key players involved in its recent transmission enables him to offer a serious critique of the history and current treatment of this manuscript. He concludes his book with an optimistic breathe that now the National Geographic has made its profitable publicity splash at the Easter season this year, the popular hype can start to fade sufficiently for real scholarly work of reconstruction and translation and analysis, which takes time and scholarly openness, can begin, just as it eventually did likewise with the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls collections.
Link to book details: The Secrets of Judas: the Story of the Misunderstood Disciple and His Lost Gospel / James Robinson (2006)
Neil Godfrey
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