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

by Bart D. Ehrman

  One other more technical matter. As I have pointed out several times in this study, when early Christian texts were copied by hand over the years, their copyists naturally made mistakes, which were then copied by still later copyists who copied these mistaken copies, and so forth. If this letter of Clement is authentic, it was written in the early third century and copied over the years until the copy was made that was reproduced by the eighteenth-century scribe who wrote it on the blank pages of the book that Smith discovered. But as it turns out, this letter as Smith found it does not have any major copying mistakes. How could this be? One classical scholar, Charles Murgia, an expert in copying practices of scribes and of forged texts, concluded that what we have in this letter is not a copy of a text but an original edition. That is to say, whoever put it in the back of this book was not copying a text but composing one, so that the letter is a forgery, of either the eighteenth century or later, say, the twentieth.

  There are two final issues to consider. Although not noted by other skeptics, these, in my view, are either signs of forgery or terrific ironies.

  First, it is very peculiar that the letter appears in the particular book that it does: Voss's 1646 edition of the letters of Ignatius. If the letter is authentic, the placement in this volume is a brilliant irony; Voss's edition was the first to remove from the Greek manuscript tradition of Ignatius the forged Ignatian documents and the interpolations made into Ignatius's text by theologically motivated scribes. And what is the newly discovered text of Clement? A letter that describes forged documents and interpolations made into Mark's text by theologically motivated scribes. And it is a letter that itself may have been forged! Is this a craftily placed fingerprint or an intriguing coincidence?

  Second, the letter begins on the first blank page at the end of the book. Surprisingly, scholars have not taken any notice of what is on the facing page, the final printed page of Voss's volume. Possibly they haven't noticed because the facing page is not found in the photographs of Smith's scholarly edition, the one that scholars engage with, but only in the popular edition, where the intended readers obviously cannot make heads or tails of it, since it is a commentary written in Latin about texts written in Greek. But the content of the page is striking. In his discussion here, the author, Voss, is noting a set of falsifications of manuscripts of the Epistle of Barnabas, another early Christian text. Voss lambastes scribes who have altered the text by making an addition to it. He points out that Ignatius was not the only one whose text was falsified by someone who wanted to make additions to it; so was Barnabas. And so he says: "Just as Ignatius had his own interpolators, who adulterated his text, so there have been others who believed that the same thing was permitted for the letter of Barnabas." He goes on to quote a bit of these falsified additions in one of the available manuscripts, and concludes by saying that he has given enough to give his readers an idea of what he means. He concludes by saying, in reference to the scribe who interpolated the falsified material, "That very impudent fellow filled more pages with these trifles." He then discusses one other textual falsification, which he indicates has misled previous scholars in their interpretation of the text. And that is the end of his discussion.

  But then, on the opposite side, begins the letter of Clement, of several pages, which most scholars have taken as authentic, but which others consider to be a textual falsification and which goes at some length to discuss textual falsification, alleged "additions" (interpolations) of another ancient Christian text, the Gospel of Mark. Was there an "impudent fellow" involved in these interpolations as well, either in ancient or modern times?

  Considering the Possibilities

  Many scholars who simply are not sure whether Smith, or someone else, forged this letter of Clement have proceeded on the assumption that it is original and then given their own interpretation and assessment of its historical significance. What if we reverse the procedure and assume, for the sake of an argument, that it was forged? It would almost certainly have to have been forged after Stahlin's 1936 edition of Clement was published. It would have to have been forged by someone who had access to the library of Mar Saba (not everyone is admitted). If the ironies of its placement in this particular book are not simply intriguing circumstances but fingerprints, then it would have to have been perpetrated by someone who knew the book was there in the library, who realized that this was the perfect place to copy the letter—for example, from an earlier visit to the library. Whoever perpetrated the fraud would have had to spend many years thinking it over and working out the wording of the letter, to make it sound like Clement, and the wording of the quotations of Secret Mark, to make them sound like Mark. This person would have had to become skilled in Greek manuscripts and to have learned to write in an eighteenth-century Greek hand. He or she would have had to have time, after long hours of practice, to write the letter in the back of the book. And he or she would have to invent a plausible account of its discovery.

  What fun it would be to photograph the text and try it out, then, on a few scholars to see if it appeared convincing. If the first ones to see the photos were not convinced, well enough! Simply let it die there. But if they were convinced, maybe show the photos to a few more people. And then more. And then, yet more intriguing, decide to analyze what you yourself had written and make all sorts of discoveries about it, recognizing a few places where you missed the mark, where the forgery wasn't quite like Clement's style, point them out, and indicate that this is a sure sign that the letter wasn't forged, since no one would make such a gaff.

  Is it conceivable that a scholar would forge this letter, just to see if it could be done? To create a "mystification for the sake of mystification?"

  In the annals of forgery, it has been done before. One of the earliest known instances is another rather humorous account. In the fourth century before the Christian era, a philosopher known to history as Dionysius the Renegade" forged and published a play in the name of the fifth-century tragedian Sophocles. The play was cited as an authentic text by Dionysius's personal rival, the philosopher Heraclides. When Dionysius mocked Heraclides for not knowing a forged text when he saw it, Heraclides insisted that it was authentic. Dionysius claimed that he himself had forged it, and pointed out to Heraclides that the first letters of several of the lines were an acrostic, which spelled out the name Pankalos, who happened to be Dionysius's lover. Heraclides persisted, claiming that this was an accident. He was told, though, that if he would read on he would find yet more hidden messages, including the lines: "An old monkey is not caught by a trap. Oh yes, he's caught at last, but it takes time." This was probably convincing enough, but a final acrostic hidden in the text dealt the death blow. It said, "Heraclides is ignorant of letters and is not ashamed of his ignorance."

  I am not willing to say that Smith was a latter-day Dionysius the Renegade, that he forged the letter of Clement which he claimed to discover. My reasons should be obvious. As soon as I say that I am certain he did so, those pages cut from the back of the book will turn up, someone will test the ink, and it will be from the eighteenth century!

  But maybe Smith forged it. Few others in the late twentieth century had the skill to pull it off. Few others had enough disdain of other scholars to want to bamboozle them. Few others would have enjoyed so immensely the sheer pleasure of having pulled the wool over the eyes of so many "experts," demonstrating once and for all one's own superiority. Maybe Smith did it.

  Or maybe this is a genuine letter by Clement of Alexandria, and there really were different versions of the Gospel of Mark available in ancient Alexandria, one of which was lost until modern times, when it was uncovered, in part, in an ancient letter in an ancient library of an ancient monastery. If so, then the letter provides us with a glimpse of yet another lost form of Christianity, a group of Carpocratians who utilized an expanded version of the Gospel of Mark that they modified for their own purposes, possibly in order to justify their morally dubious communal activities.

  Either wa
y, whether forged or authentic, Morton Smith's letter of Clement provides us with one of the most interesting documents relating to early Christianity to be discovered in the twentieth century.

  Part Two: HERESIES AND ORTHODOXIES

  There is more to the question of Lost Christianities than the few texts we have already considered—more even than the dozens of others we have not—texts lost from sight, forgotten, thought to have been destroyed, only to reappear in modern times, the result of the archaeologist's diligent search or, more commonly, the fortunes of serendipity. For lost Christianities also involves the social groups that utilized these texts, groups of Christians who, like all groups of Christians at all times and in all places, understood themselves to be the fortunate heirs of the truth, handed down to them by their faithful predecessors, who received their understandings about God, Christ, the world, and our place in it from people who should know—ultimately from the apostles of Jesus, and through them from Jesus himself, the one sent by God.

  Not everyone could be right, of course, in this understanding, for different groups of Christians in the ancient world held varying, even contradictory, points of view. Unless Jesus provided an entire panoply of self-contradictory teachings, then some, most, or all of these groups represented perspectives that were not his. Groups that insisted there was only one God (and that Jesus had taught so) could not be right if groups insisting there were two Gods (and that Jesus had taught so) were right.

  In some ways, this matter of being "right" was a concern unique to Christianity. The Roman Empire was populated with religions of all kinds: family religions, local religions, city religions, state religions. Virtually everyone in this mind-boggling complexity, except the Jews, worshiped numerous gods in numerous ways.' So far as we can tell, this was almost never recognized as a problem. No one, that is, thought it was contradictory, or even problematic, to worship Jupiter and Venus and Mars and others of the "great" gods, along with local gods of your city and the lesser divine beings who looked over your crops, your daily affairs, your wife in childbirth, your daughter in sickness, and your son in his love life. Multiplicity bred respect and, for the most part, plurality bred tolerance. No one had the sense that if they were right to worship their gods by the means appropriate to them, you were therefore wrong to worship your gods by the means appropriate to them.

  Moreover, one significant feature of these ancient religions—with the partial exception, again, of Judaism—is that worship never involved accepting or making doctrinally acceptable claims about a god. There were no creeds devised to proclaim the true nature of the gods and their interaction with the world, no doctrinally precise professions of faith to be recited during services of worship, no such thing as "orthodoxy" (right beliefs) or "heresy" (false beliefs). What mattered were traditionally sanctioned acts of worship, not beliefs.

  But then came Christianity. As soon as some of Jesus' followers pronounced their belief that he had been raised from the dead, Christians began to understand that Jesus himself was, in some way, the only means of a right standing before God, the only way of salvation. But once that happened, a new factor entered the religion scene of antiquity. Christians by their very nature became exclusivists, claiming to be right in such a way that everyone else was necessarily wrong. As some of the early Christian writings exclaimed, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among humans by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12) and "The one who believes in his name has eternal life; the one who does not obey the son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him" (John 3:36). Or, as Jesus himself was recorded as saying, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).

  Moreover, since Christians maintained that (a) what ultimately mattered was a right relationship with God, (b) a right relationship with God required belief, and (c) belief had to be in something, rather than some kind of vague, abstract faith that things were right (or wrong) with the world, then Christians, with their exclusive claims, had to decide what the content of faith was to be. What exactly does one have to believe about God in order to be right with him? That he is the supreme God above all other gods? That he is the only God and that no others exist? That he created the world? That before now he never had any involvement with the world? That he created the evil in the world? That he is completely removed from evil? That he inspired the Jewish Scriptures? That a lesser deity inspired those Scriptures?

  What does one need to believe about Jesus? That he was a man? An angel? A divine being? Was he a god? Was he God? If Jesus is God and God is God, how can we be monotheists who believe in one God? And if the Spirit is God, too, then don't we have three Gods? Or is Jesus God the Father himself come to earth for the salvation of the world? If so, then when Jesus prayed to God, was he speaking to himself?

  And what was it about Jesus that brought salvation? His public teachings, which if followed provide the way to eternal life? His secret teachings, meant only for the spiritually elite, whose proper understanding is the key to unity with God? His way of life, which is to be modeled by followers who like him must give up all they have for the sake of the kingdom? His death on the cross? Did he die on the cross? Why would he die on the cross?

  The questions may have seemed endless, but their importance was eternal. For once it began to matter just what a person believed—so important that eternal life depended on it—the debates began. And different points of view emerged. All of the viewpoints claimed support, of course, in the teachings of Jesus—even the views that claimed there were 365 gods, that Jesus was not really a human being, that his death was simply a ruse meant to deceive the cosmic powers. Today we might think it nonsense to say that Jesus and his earthly followers taught such things, since, after all, we can see in the New Testament Gospels that it simply is not true. But we should always ask the historical questions: Where did we get our New Testament Gospels in the first place, and how do we know that they, rather than the dozens of Gospels that did not become part of the New Testament, reveal the truth about what Jesus taught? What if the canon had ended up containing the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, and Mary rather than Matthew, Mark, and Luke?

  From the historians' perspective it is striking that all forms of early Christianity claimed authorization of their views by tracing their lineage back through the apostles to Jesus. The writings of Jesus himself, of course, were never an issue, because so far as we know, he never wrote anything. For this reason, apostolic authorship assumed a paramount importance to the earliest Christians. No wonder so much forgery was occurring among all groups, the proto-orthodox included.

  But what of these other groups? We have looked at some important writings from the early Christian centuries, Gospels of Peter and Thomas, and, if it be authentic, (Secret) Mark, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Acts of Thomas, the Acts of John, an Apocalypse of Peter, and several other important books, lost and now found. There will be many more for us to consider as we proceed with our study. Not only are these documents important in themselves, however; so too are the social groups that produced, read, and revered them. For there were many early Christian groups, most of them recognizing the eternal significance of the theological truths that they claimed, and yet most of them also at odds—not just with the Roman religions surrounding them and the Jewish religion from which they emerged but also with one another. These internal disputes over which form of the religion was "right" were long, hard, and sometimes ugly.

  Among the fascinating "discoveries" by scholars in modern times has been the realization of just how diverse these Christian groups were from one another, just how "right" each one felt it was, just how avidly it promoted its own views over against those of the others. Yet only one group won these early battles. Even this one group, however, was no monolith, for there were enormous untracked territories and gigantic swaths of doctrinal penumbrae within the broad contours of theological consensus it managed to create, shady areas where issues remained unre
solved until later rounds of trial and error, dogmatism and heresy hunting, led to yet further debate and partial resolution. We will not be plumbing the depths of those later debates from the fourth century and later. Their nuances are difficult for many modern readers to appreciate or even fathom. Instead, we will focus our attention on the earlier centuries, when some of the most fundamental issues of early Christian doctrine were debated: How many gods are there? Was the material world created by the true God? Was Jesus human, divine, or both? These issues, at least, were resolved, leading to the creeds still recited today and the standardized New Testaments now read by millions of people throughout the world.

  In this second part of our study, we will consider various groups that held wide-ranging opinions on such matters, groups attested in numerous ancient sources, including the writings of their Christian opponents who found their views offensive at best and damnable at worst. Four groups will occupy our attention in the chapters that follow: the Jewish Christian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, some early Christian Gnostics, and the group we have already labeled the proto-orthodox. Once we have described the various beliefs and, to a lesser extent, the known practices of these groups, we will be able to proceed in part 3 to consider how they engaged in their battles for dominance, leading to the virtual elimination of all groups from the Christian world through the victory of the one group that then successfully declared itself orthodox.

  Chapter Five: At Polar Ends of the Spectrum: Early Christian Ebionites and Marcionites

  To say that one of the ensured results of historical scholarship is that Jesus was a Jew may sound a bit trite, like saying that one of the assured results of modern science is that paper is combustible. Still, not even a century ago, the Jewishness of Jesus was a matter of real dispute among serious scholars of ancient Christianity. Moreover, throughout the history of the Christian church, even when Jesus' Jewish identity has not been denied it has been compromised, overlooked, or ignored. No one who working in the field of New Testament scholarship today, however, sees Jesus' Jewishness as contentious on the one hand or insignificant on the other. Jesus was Jewish, and any evaluation of his words, deeds, and fate needs to keep that constantly in mind.