The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

by Bart D. Ehrman

  In contrast, from the same period, five (partial) unidentified Gospels have been discovered; these are texts that provide accounts of Jesus' words and deeds but that are too fragmentary to establish which Gospel they belonged to, except to say that they did not belong to any Gospel we know about by name. In addition, there are three fragmentary copies of the Gospel of Thomas, allegedly written by Jesus' twin brother, Didymus Judas Thomas (the subject of chapter 3). And there are two fragmentary copies of a Gospel allegedly written by Mary Magdalene, in which she reveals the secrets that Jesus had given her as his closest companion. From the same period we also have three fragmentary copies of the Gospel of Peter (this is not counting the later copy found in the monk's tomb in Akhmim).

  And so it is an interesting question to ask: Which Gospel was more popular in early Christianity, Mark or Peter? It is rather hard to say. But if the material remains are any gauge, one would have to give the palm to Peter, with three times as many surviving manuscript remains as Mark.

  These three fragments of the Gospel of Peter are small. One of them consists of just seven partial lines. But the fragments, taken as a whole, have a significance that transcends their size. One of them appears to have come from a second-century (or early third-century) copy that contained the same account of Joseph of Arimathea asking for Jesus' body that is found in the larger copy discovered in the monk's tomb in Akhmim. That is significant because it shows that the later seventh- or eighth-century copy may faithfully represent the text as found already in Serapion's day.

  The other two fragments come from other portions of the Gospel, and there are debates about whether they stem from the same Gospel of Peter or a different one. It is hard to know, because the credit card-sized fragments contain so little text, making their reconstruction complicated. But both of them appear to represent a conversation between Jesus and Peter, in which Peter speaks in the first person. The first (the one with only seven partial lines) has Jesus predicting that all the disciples, even Peter, will betray him. This would be, then, the familiar account of the Last Supper, but told by Peter himself.

  The second contains a saying not found in the canonical Gospels but known to scholars of Christian antiquity from another surviving document called Clement, a proto-orthodox document of the mid-second century, which nonetheless records a rather peculiar interchange between Jesus and Peter. According to Clement, the conversation went like this:

  For the Lord said, "You will be like sheep in the midst of wolves." But Peter replied to him, "What if the wolves rip apart the sheep?" Jesus said to Peter, "After they are dead, the sheep should fear the wolves no longer. So too you: Do not fear those who kill you and then can do nothing more to you; but fear the one who, after you die, has the power to cast your body and soul into the hell of fire." (2 Clement 5:2-4)

  The fragment of the Gospel of Peter we are concerned with here, published just in 1994, contains a similar account, with two main differences. For one thing, here the words of Jesus are given a broader context. It begins with Jesus telling his disciples that they are to be "as innocent as doves but wise as serpents" and that they will be like "sheep among the wolves." They respond, quite sensibly, one might think: "But what if we are ripped apart?" Then comes the second difference: "And Jesus replied to me. . . ." What follows is the saying that dead sheep have nothing to fear from wolves, and so on.

  Since in the version of Clement this is a response to Peter, but in this fragment it is a response to someone speaking in the first person, it seems likely that the fragment comes from a Gospel in which the author is speaking in the name of Peter himself, as in the longer text discovered in the monk's tomb in Akhmim. It is not completely clear where the anonymous author of Clement derived his knowledge of this conversation. Since it is not in any of the other Gospels. Possibly he too had read the Gospel of Peter and accepted it as an authoritative account of Jesus' words.

  One other interesting archaeological find relates to the Gospel of Peter and shows that the book continued to be read and revered as Scripture for centuries. There was published in 1904 an edition of a small ostracon, a piece of earthenware pottery, broken off and used for writing/drawing. It has not received much critical attention from scholars but is one of the oddest pieces to survive from Christian antiquity. It appears to date from the sixth or seventh century. On one side of the triangular piece (roughly 3’ x 4’ x 5’) is a crude drawing of a man with wide eyes, long nose, hair at the top of his head, a beard (or a collar?) on his chin, shoulders, and stick arms with stick hands, one open in a gesture of prayer, the other holding a stick or staff (with a cross at the top) raised up over his head. The ostracon contains several pieces of writing, all in Greek. Over the stick figure's head is written "Peter"; to the left is written "The Saint"; and to the right is written "The Evangelist." That is noteworthy: Peter is identified not merely as an apostle or a disciple of Jesus but as an author of one of the Gospels, an Evangelist. More striking still is the Greek writing on the reverse side: "Let us venerate him, let us receive his Gospel."

  Somebody revered Peter and his Gospel, somebody living in Egypt, some four or five hundred years after Serapion had forbidden the Gospel's use. And this Egyptian was not alone. She or he must have been part of a community, which must have had a contemporary copy of the Gospel and accepted it as a sacred text. Nor was the community of the ostracon's inscriber alone: A fragment of the Gospel was buried, presumably as a cherished text, in the tomb of a monk a century or so later. The Gospel of Peter may have become lost to us, but it was widely used in the early centuries of Christianity, and it continued to be used down to the early Middle Ages in some parts of the church.

  The Accompanying Apocalypse of Peter

  The community or communities that used the Gospel of Peter may have used other noncanonical texts as well. As I have noted, the Gospel of Peter is bound

  up in a manuscript that contains other documents, including one we will meet with again in our discussion, since it stood on the fringes of the New Testament canon for centuries. Like the Gospel, it, too, is attributed to Peter. This, however, is an "apocalypse," a revelation of the heavenly realities that can make sense of life here on earth. In this case, the realities are not so much future catastrophes that God will bring against this planet, as one finds in the book of Revelation, the one apocalypse that made it into the New Testament. Instead, the Apocalypse of Peter shows the fates of those who have died, both those who have done the will of God and those who have opposed him. These fates are described in remarkably concrete and authoritative terms, for Jesus himself takes his disciple Peter on a guided tour of the abodes of the blessed and damned, of heaven and hell. Dante did not invent the idea of such a tour; The Divine Comedy was already standing in a long Christian tradition, going back at least to the once-lost but now-found Apocalypse of Peter.

  The account begins with Jesus teaching his disciples on the Mount of Olives and the disciples asking when the end will come (cf. Matthew 24). Jesus responds by telling them the parable of the fig tree: "... as soon as its shoots have come forth and the twigs grown, the end of the world shall come" (ch. 1). Peter and the others are understandably confused: "And I, Peter, answered and said to him, 'Interpret the fig tree to me: How can we understand it? For throughout all its days the fig tree sends forth shoots and every year it brings forth its fruit" (ch. 2).

  Jesus goes on to explain that the fig tree refers to Israel and that in the future there will come forth from it false Christs and prophets. This is then the beginning of the end, which Jesus describes not so much in terms of earthly disasters—there are some of these, to be sure—as in terms of the fates of individuals in the afterlife.

  It is the fate of the damned and their various eternal tortures that have sparked the greatest interest in this text. The torments are particularly lurid, with the punishments matching the sinners' crimes. Blasphemers are hanged by their tongues, forever, over unquenchable fire; women who braided their hair to make themselves attractiv
e to lustful men are hanged by their hair; the men who committed fornication with these women are hanged by their genitals. Those who trusted in riches are eternally cast onto a razor-sharp pillar of fire; bankers who made money on interest spend eternity up to their knees in filth; children who disobeyed their parents are incessantly eaten by savage birds; slaves who disobeyed their masters are forced to gnaw their own tongues without ceasing.

  The blessings of the saved are understandably less graphic. Anyone with sufficient imagination can devise numerous creative torments, but there are only so many ways to describe eternal bliss. Still, for this text, the rewards of the blessed make any temporary hardship here on earth clearly worth the price. This is an eternal ecstasy reserved for the few.

  The author of this firsthand narrative, allegedly Peter himself, clearly produced his account not merely to entertain his Christian readers but also to advance several major theological views. In particular, of course, he shows that anyone who sides with God will reap a reward whereas anyone who opposes God will pay an everlasting and horrific price. Just as important, however, the author stresses that God is in control of all that happens in this world, appearances notwithstanding. In other words, this account, like other early Christian "apocalypses," is not meant simply to scare people into avoiding certain kinds of behavior—lying, committing adultery, blaspheming, relying on wealth, etc.— but also to explain that the evil and suffering of this age will be resolved in the next, that what happens here will be overturned there, that those who succeed by being wicked now will pay an eternal price later, whereas those who suffer for doing what is right now will be vindicated forever, as God shows once and for all that he and he alone is sovereign over this world.

  The Gospel of Peter and Other Early Christian Literature

  This initial foray into the Christian apocrypha of the second century shows that Christians were reading far more sacred literature than one might think. They were not reading only the books that eventually made it into the New Testament. There is no way of knowing whether during the time of Serapion of Antioch (end of the second century) the Christians of Rhossus ever had heard of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Their Gospel was the Gospel of Peter, until the bishop asserted his authority and banned its use. Whether he was successful in doing so, in the short run, is something we will never know. What we can know is that the Gospel was being read not just in Syria but also in Egypt, possibly at an early stage, since the papyri that contain it are roughly contemporary with Serapion. And it is more widely attested than even some of our canonical books, including the Gospel of Mark.

  Christians were reading other texts as well. Some were reading the Acts of Pilate, a book I have not yet mentioned. This is an account which describes the trial of Jesus in a much fuller fashion than in the surviving fragment of the Gospel of Peter, showing the guilt of the Jews and the superiority of Jesus over everything pagan. In this account, which is referred to by the second-century author Justin Martyr, the images of the Roman gods bow down to Jesus when he enters the room. At a later date this account was combined with a detailed description of Christ's descent into Hades, which took place between his death and resurrection to form what is now known as the Gospel of Nicodemus. Had Tertullian read early versions of any of this material? He certainly had read some version of the letter Pilate had sent back to the Roman emperor, proclaiming Jesus' innocence and divinity. As we saw at the outset, his contemporary Origen had read yet other Gospels—those according to the Egyptians, the Twelve Apostles, Matthias, Basilides, and Thomas. And we know of apocalypses being read as well, including the one allegedly written by Peter and lost until discovered in a monk's tomb along with Peter's Gospel.

  What else might early Christians have been reading as Scripture? Lots of texts, most of them proscribed, burned, lost. Some of them have been recently found, if only in tantalizing fragments. What we would give for a complete copy of Peter's Gospel, or of the stories of Pilate, or of the Gospels or apocalypses that we know only by name. But only a few of these early Christian writings managed to survive the proscriptions of their proto-orthodox enemies, sometimes circulating in clandestine copies in the Middle Ages, occasionally being quoted by this or that church father for reasons of his own, and in those rare moments of genuine discovery, sometimes turning up in the sands of Egypt, uncovered by trained archaeologists digging through ancient garbage heaps of ancient cities or stumbled upon by bedouin, going about their business and serendipitously unearthing finds that can tell us something about the lost Christianities of antiquity.

  Chapter Two: The Ancient Forgery of a Discovery: The Acts of Paul and Thecla

  Most texts revered as sacred by ancient Christians have been lost. Some of these have been discovered in modern times, but the majority are still relegated to oblivion, known only by name and, when we are fortunate, by a general sense of what they must have been like. Several, however, have been long available, even if almost entirely forgotten.

  Forgotten, that is, to the world at large, not so much to scholars of antiquity, who spend their lives learning ancient and obscure languages, poring over ancient manuscripts and massive printed tomes, studying the records of the past. One of the ancient texts known well to scholars of Christian antiquity but virtually unknown to others is a fascinating document of the second century called the Acts of Thecla, an account of the exploits of a woman disciple of the apostle Paul.

  There was a time—a millennium and a half ago—when Thecla was a household name, at least in Christian households. Her following was huge. Pilgrims flocked to her shrines in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Devotees committed their lives to her adoration. Revered as a model martyr and worshiped as a saint, in some parts of the Christian world Thecla vied for centuries with Mary, the Mother of Jesus herself, as most important person outside the Trinity.

  The stories of Thecla's miraculous life, much like the stories of Jesus, originally circulated in oral traditions, possibly from the early second century onwards. But they are best known from a written account, the Acts of Thecla, eventually included in part of a larger corpus of writings known as the Acts of Paul, which narrates tales of Paul's journeys and miraculous adventures. One of the striking features of the accounts of Paul and Thecla is that we know it was forged. Of course, we know that the Gospel of Peter was forged as well, along with other books we have already mentioned—the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Apocalypse of Peter—and scores of other books from the ancient world. But in this case there is a difference. The author who forged the Acts of Paul and Thecla was caught and confessed to the deed.

  The Practice of Forgery in Antiquity

  Ancient people not only suspected forgery on occasion; they also had the means to detect it. It is wrong to say—as it sometimes is said, even by scholars who ought to know better—that forgery in antiquity was so common that no one took it seriously and that few people were swayed by it. The ancient sources that discuss the practice attack it; and if no one was swayed by the ruse, there would have been scant reason to employ it. Many forgers were so good that they succeeded completely; even today scholars debate the authorship of numerous works from antiquity, including some that came to be included in the sacred canon of Scripture.

  The means of detection in the ancient world were much the same as those used today, although they are used much more efficiently now, of course, given our advanced technologies and data retrieval systems. If a work refers to an event that transpired centuries after its reputed author died, that would be a good indication that something is not right. If it uses words or ideas or philosophical notions that had not come into existence during the alleged author's lifetime, that might be a key. If it uses a writing style completely at variance with what can be found in the author's undisputed works, that would be a clue.

  An amusing anecdote from the period of our concern, the second and third Christian centuries, illustrates the point. The famous Roman physician Galen (129-99 ce) was a prolific author whose books found a
wide market. One day, walking along a street in Rome, he passed a book stall that was selling a book by "Galen" and he overheard an argument between two potential buyers, one of whom declared the book a fraud, on the grounds that it was not written in Galen's distinctive style. That both pleased the famous writer himself and sparked an idea: Galen dashed off a booklet called On His Own Books, a work describing how one could distinguish the genuine books of Galen from the forgeries. The booklet still survives today.

  Why did forgers in the ancient world perpetrate their frauds? Ancient sources discuss the problem and suggest several motivations. As may have been the case of Galen's forgery, sometimes there was a profit motive. This was especially true when new libraries were starting up in major cities and kings were competing with one another for the best holdings. In an age before texts could be flawlessly reproduced by mechanical means, it was thought that original documents were superior to later copies that could, and almost always did, contain scribal errors. A remarkable number of "original" texts of Aristotle might appear when they could fetch a good price.

  In some instances, forgers were driven by animosity and sheer spite. We know of one instance in which a Greek author of the fourth century bce, Anaximenes, forged letters in the name and style of his archenemy, the historian Theopompus, letters filled with invective against the major cities of Greece. He then sent the letters to the ruling councils of each of the cities, making Theopompus a persona non grata wherever he wanted to go.