Blogging Through "Lord Jesus Christ": The Non-Biblical Jesus Books

People at the popular level are becoming more aware that other Jesus books existed very early in addition to the four New Testament Gospels. As we engage our world in gospel conversations, then, it's important to know what to make of these writings. Some claim far more for these writings--and assume a much earlier date for them--than is warranted.

This is the fifth installment of a series called "Blogging Through 'Lord Jesus Christ.'" Earlier posts:

Introduction

The Writings of Paul

The Q Source(s)

The Four Gospels

Since Hurtado chose to extend his analysis of earliest Christianity into the second century, he includes coverage of the non-biblical books about Jesus. He covers the "lost" books, so-called "secret Mark," and fragments of writings--or at least he covers as much as we can know of them through the references to them in existing writings. He also comments on better-known second-century writings in this section, notably the Gospel of Thomas.

Several of the non-biblical Jesus books can be regarded as coming from writers who would have been counted as within the mainstream of traditional Christianity:

Some [second-century Jesus books] appear to be intended as elaborations, adornments, and renditions of the traditions about Jesus in the canonical Gospels. There is no indication that these writings were composed to displace or compete with the canonical accounts. Instead they probably reflect the curiosity and piety of many ordinary believers, though perhaps those with a somewhat unsophisticated mentality, for whom the canonical Gospels were familiar and respected texts.

This is an awfully generous take on writings that include such things as a floating cross following Jesus out of the tomb (Gospel of Peter) or a spiteful, vindictive boy Jesus who curses with blindness those who disagree with him (Infancy Gospel of Thomas--not the same book as the Gospel of Thomas)!

On the other hand, "other writings were more clearly intended as alternative, competitive renditions of Jesus, and they appear to have been produced by, and for, 'heterodox' circles who distinguished their views from the more familiar beliefs" of traditional Christians.

Certainly the heterodox Jesus book that has generated the most interest in our day is the Gospel of Thomas. It is likely that anyone who has taken a university religion class in the last 10 years or who reads newsweeklies has heard of this ancient document. The earliest written copy we have is from the fourth century, discovered in Nag Hammadi in 1945, but at least some form of the book reaches back as early as the second century. In its present form, it is 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. It is an esoteric adaptation of--and revision of and even mocking of--traditional understandings of Jesus. In fact, the book cannot be understood unless there is a familiarity with the biblical material it is reacting against. "Its pervasively revisionist tone," Hurtado wrote, "shows that it represents reaction against prior expressions of early Christian faith."

What is obvious from Hurtado's coverage of this second-century material is that it is all dependent on, not parallel to, the earliest writings that we find in the New Testament. Certainly works like the Gospel of Thomas depict an alternative Christianity to the more traditional version we are familiar with. But writers who would have us imagine the alternative Christianities coexisting and competing with traditional Christianity from the very start don't have much of a case.



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