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

by Bart D. Ehrman

  To what Scriptures did these Ebionites appeal in support of their views? What books did they revere and study and read as part of their services of worship? Obviously they retained the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) as the Scripture par excellence. These people were Jews, or converts to Judaism, who understood that the ancient Jewish traditions revealed God's ongoing interactions with his people and his Law for their lives. Almost as obviously, they did not accept any of the writings of Paul. Indeed, for them, Paul was not just wrong about a few minor points. He was the archenemy, the heretic who had led so many astray by insisting that a person is made right with God apart from keeping the Law and who forbade circumcision, the "sign of the covenant," for his followers.

  The Ebionites did have other "Christian" texts as part of their canon, however. Not surprisingly, they appear to have accepted the Gospel of Matthew as their principal scriptural authority. Their own version of Matthew, however, may have been a translation of the text into Aramaic. Jesus himself spoke Aramaic in Palestine, as did his earliest followers. It would make sense that a group of Jewish followers of Jesus that originated in Palestine would continue to cite his words, and stories about him, in his native tongue. It appears likely that this Aramaic Matthew was somewhat different from the Matthew now in the canon. In particular, the Matthew used by Ebionite Christians would have lacked the first two chapters, which narrate Jesus' birth to a virgin—a notion that the Ebionite Christians rejected. There were doubtless other differences from our own version of Matthew's Gospel as well.

  We do not know what the Ebionites called their version of Matthew's Gospel. It may have been identical with a book known to some early church writers as the Gospel of the Nazareans. Nazarean was a name sometimes used for groups of Jewish Christians, of which there were others besides the Ebionites.

  We have evidence of yet another Gospel authority used by some or all groups of Ebionite Christians. The evidence comes to us from the fourth-century writings of a vitriolic opponent of all things heretical, Epiphanius, orthodox bishop on the island of Cyprus. In a lengthy book that details and then fervently attacks eighty different heretical groups, Epiphanius devotes a chapter to the Ebionites and quotes a Gospel that they are said to have used. He gives seven brief quotations—not nearly as many as we would like, but enough to get a general sense of this now lost Gospel. For one thing, this particular Gospel of the Ebionites appears to have been a "harmonization" of the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Evidence that it harmonized the earlier sources comes in the account that it gave of Jesus' baptism. As careful readers have long noticed, the three Synoptic Gospels all record the words spoken by a voice from heaven as Jesus emerges from the water; but the voice says something different in all three accounts: "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17); "You are my Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11); and, in the oldest witnesses to Luke's Gospel, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you" (Luke 3:23). What did the voice actually say? In the Gospel of the Ebionites, the matter is resolved easily enough. For here the voice speaks three times, saying something different on each occasion.

  The antisacrificial views of the Ebionites also come through in some of the fragments that Epiphanius quotes. In one of them, the disciples ask Jesus where he wants to eat the Passover lamb with them (cf. Mark 14:12), and he replies, "I have no desire to eat the flesh of this Passover Lamb with you." In another place, he says somewhat more forthrightly, "I have come to abolish the sacrifices; if you do not cease from sacrificing, the wrath of God will not cease from weighing upon you."

  Where there is no sacrifice, there is also no meat. Probably the most interesting of the changes from the familiar New Testament accounts of Jesus comes in the Gospel of the Ebionites description of John the Baptist, who, evidently, like his successor Jesus, maintained a strictly vegetarian cuisine. In this Gospel, with the change of just one letter of the relevant Greek word, the diet of John the Baptist was said to have consisted not of locusts [meat!] and wild honey (cf. Mark 1:6) but of pancakes and wild honey. It was a switch that may have been preferable on other grounds as well.

  This Gospel of the Ebionites was evidently written in Greek (hence the ability to change the locusts into pancakes), based to some extent on Matthew, Mark, and Luke (hence the harmonizing tendency). It would have been used by Ebionite Christians who no longer knew Aramaic, who were, therefore, living outside of Palestine. And it would have included the Ebionites' own perspectives on the nature of true religion (hence the condemnation of animal sacrifice)—all the more reason to regret that we have such scant access to it, one more Gospel lost to posterity, destroyed or forgotten by the proto-orthodox victors in the struggle to decide what Christians would believe and read.

  Christians Who Spurn All Things Jewish: The Marcionites

  Living at the same time and also enjoying the unwanted attention of proto-orthodox opponents, though standing at just the opposite end of the theological spectrum, were a group of Christians known as the Marcionites. In this instance, there is no question concerning the origin of the name. These were followers of the second-century evangelist/theologian Marcion, known to later Christianity as one of the arch heretics of his day, but by all counts one of the most significant Christian thinkers and writers of the early centuries. We are better informed about the Marcionites than about the Ebionites, because their opponents took them more seriously as a threat to the well-being of the church at large. As I have intimated, potential converts from among the pagans were not flocking to the Ebionite form of religion, which involved restricting activities on Saturday, giving up pork and other popular foods, and, for the men, undergoing surgery to remove the foreskin of their penises.

  The Marcionites, on the other hand, had a highly attractive religion to many pagan converts, as it was avowedly Christian with nothing Jewish about it. In fact, everything Jewish was taken out of it. Jews, recognized around the world for customs that struck many pagans as bizarre at best, would have difficulty recognizing in the Marcionite religion an offshoot of their own. Not only were Jewish customs rejected, so, too, were the Jewish Scriptures and the Jewish God. From a historical perspective, it is intriguing that any such religion could claim direct historical continuity with Jesus.

  Since Marcionite Christianity was seen as a significant threat to the burgeoning proto-orthodox movement, the heresiologists wrote a good deal about it. Tertullian, for example, devoted five volumes to attacking Marcion and his views. These volumes are primary sources for the conflict, to be supplemented by attacks mounted by Tertullian's successors, including Epiphanius of Salamis.

  One still needs to sift through what is said; you can never rely on an enemy's reports for a fair and disinterested presentation. And once again, Marcion's own writings and those of his survivors were long ago relegated to the trash heap or bonfire. Still, we appear to get a fairly good sense of Marcion's life and teachings from the polemical sources that survive."

  The Life and Teachings of Marcion

  Marcion was born around 100 ce, in the city of Sinope, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, in the region of Pontus. His father was said to have been the bishop of the church there—an altogether plausible claim, as it can make sense of Marcion's intimate familiarity with the Jewish Bible, which he later came to reject, and his full understanding of certain aspects of the Christian faith from an early period in his life. As an adult, he evidently was wealthy, having made his money as a shipping merchant or possibly a shipbuilder.

  Later reports indicate that he had a falling out with his father, who proceeded to remove him from the church. The rumor mill indicated that it was because he had "seduced a virgin." Most scholars take that as a metaphorical seduction—that Marcion had corrupted members of the congregation (the church as the virgin of Christ) by his false teachings.

  In any event, in 139 ce Marcion appears to have traveled from his native Asia Minor to the city of Rome, which, as the capital and largest city of the empire, appears to hav
e attracted all sorts, including all sorts of Christians, in this period. He made a good impression on the church there—already one of the largest churches in the world (if not the largest)—by donating 200,000 sesterces for the church's mission. Although recognized for his munificence, Marcion appears to have had bigger designs. But he lay low and worked out his plan over the course of five years, bringing it forth in two literary productions.

  Before discussing these books, I should say a word about the theology Marcion developed, which was seen as distinctive, revolutionary, compelling, and therefore dangerous. Among all the Christian texts and authors at his disposal, Marcion was especially struck by the writings of the apostle Paul, and in particular the distinction that Paul drew in Galatians and elsewhere between the Law of the Jews and the gospel of Christ. As we have seen, Paul claimed that a person is made right with God by faith in Christ, not by doing the works of the Law. This distinction became fundamental to Marcion, and he made it absolute. The gospel is the good news of deliverance; it involves love, mercy, grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption, and life. The Law, however, is the bad news that makes the gospel necessary in the first place; it involves harsh commandments, guilt, judgment, enmity, punishment, and death. The Law is given to the Jews. The gospel is given by Christ.

  How could the same God be responsible for both? Or put in other terms: How could the wrathful, vengeful God of the Jews be the loving, merciful God of Jesus? Marcion maintained that these attributes could not belong to one God, as they stand at odds with one another: hatred and love, vengeance and mercy, judgment and grace. He concluded that there must in fact be two Gods: the God of the Jews, as found in the Old Testament, and the God of Jesus, as found in the writings of Paul.

  Once Marcion arrived at this understanding, everything else naturally fell into place. The God of the Old Testament was the God who created this world and everything in it, as described in Genesis. The God of Jesus, therefore, had never been involved with this world but came into it only when Jesus himself appeared from heaven. The God of the Old Testament was the God who called the Jews to be his people and gave them his Law. The God of Jesus did not consider the Jews to be his people (for him; they were the chosen of the other God), and he was not a God who gave laws.

  The God of the Old Testament insisted that people keep his Law and penalized them when they failed. He was not evil, but he was rigorously just. He had laws and inflicted penalties on those who did not keep them. But this necessarily made him a wrathful God, since no one kept all of his laws perfectly. Everyone had to pay the price for their transgressions, and the penalty for transgression was death. The God of the Old Testament was therefore completely justified in exacting his punishments and sentencing all people to death.

  The God of Jesus came into this world in order to save people from the vengeful God of the Jews. He was previously unknown to this world and had never had any previous dealings with it. Hence Marcion sometimes referred to him as God the Stranger. Not even the prophecies of the future Messiah come from this God, for these refer not to Jesus but to a coming Messiah of Israel, to be sent by the God of the Jews, the creator of this world and the God of the Old Testament. Jesus came completely unexpectedly and did what no one could possibly have hoped for: He paid the penalty for other people's sins, to save them from the just wrath of the Old Testament God.

  But how could Jesus himself, who represented the nonmaterial God, come into this material world—created by the other God—without becoming part of it? How could the nonmaterial become material, even for such a good and noble cause as salvation? Marcion taught that Jesus was not truly a part of this material world. He did not have a flesh-and-blood body. He was not actually born. He was not really human. He only appeared to be a human with a material existence like everyone else. In other words, Marcion, like some Gnostic Christians, was a docetist who taught that Jesus only "seemed" to have a fleshly body.

  Coming "in the likeness of sinful flesh," as Marcion's favorite author Paul put it (Rom. 8:3), Jesus paid the penalty for other people's sins by dying on the cross. By having faith in his death, one could escape the throes of the wrathful God of the Jews and have eternal life with the God of love and mercy, the God of Jesus. But how could Jesus die for the sins of the world if he did not have a real body? How could his shed blood bring atonement if he did not have real blood?

  Unfortunately, we do not know exactly how Marcion developed the details of his theory of atonement. Possibly he, like some Christians after him, thought that Jesus' death was a kind of trap that fooled the divine being who had control of human souls lost to sin, that the God of the Jews was forced to relinquish the souls of those who believed in Jesus' death, not realizing that in fact the death was only an appearance. But we do not actually know how Marcion worked out the theological niceties.

  What we do know is that he based this entire system on sacred texts that he had in his church. These included, but were not limited to, the writings of Paul. Tertullian indicates, for example, that Marcion was particularly attracted to the saying of Jesus that a tree is known by its fruit (see Luke 6:43-44): Good trees do not produce rotten fruit, and rotten trees do not produce good fruit. What happens when the principle is applied to the divine realm? What kind of God creates a world wracked with pain, misery, disaster, disease, sin, and death? What kind of God says that he is the one who "creates evil" (Amos 3.6)? Surely a God who is himself evil. But what kind of God brings love, mercy, grace, salvation, and life? A God who does what is kind and generous and good? A God who is good.

  There are two Gods, then, and according to Marcion, Jesus himself says so. Moreover, Jesus explains that no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the old wineskins burst and both they and the wine are destroyed (Mark 2:22). The gospel is a new thing that has come into the world. It cannot be put into the old wineskins of the Jewish religion.

  Marcion's Literary Productions

  Once Marcion had worked out his theological system, he incorporated it into his two literary works. The first was his own composition, a book that no longer survives, except in the quotations of his opponents. Marcion called the book the Antitheses (Contrary statements). It was evidently a kind of commentary on the Bible, in which Marcion demonstrated his doctrinal views that the God of the Old Testament could not be the God of Jesus. Some of the book may well have consisted of direct and pointed antithetical statements contrasting the two Gods. For example, the God of the Old Testament tells the people of Israel to enter into the city of Jericho and murder every man, woman, child, and animal in the city (Joshua 6); but the God of Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies, to pray for those who persecute them, to turn the other cheek (Luke 6:27-29). Is this the same God? When Elisha, the prophet of the Old Testament God, was being mocked by a group of young boys, God allowed him to call out two she-bears to attack and maul them (2 Kings 2:23-24). The God of Jesus says, "Let the little children come to me" (Luke 18:15-17). Is this the same God? The God of the Old Testament said, "Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree" (Deut. 27:26; 28:58). But the God of Jesus ordered him, the one who was blessed, to be hanged on a tree. Is this the same God?

  Many Christians today might be sympathetic with Marcion's view, as one often hears even still about the wrathful God of the Old Testament and the loving God of the New. Marcion, however, drove the idea to its limit, in a way many moderns could not accept. For him, there really were two Gods, and he set out to demonstrate it by appealing to the Old Testament. In this book of Antitheses, Marcion showed that he was not willing to explain away these passages by providing them with a figurative or symbolic interpretation; for him, they were to be taken literally. And when so read, they stood in stark contrast with the clear teachings of Jesus and his gospel of love and mercy.

  Marcion's second literary creation was not an original composition but a new edition of other texts. Marcion put together a canon of Scripture, that is, a collection of books that he considered to be sacred authorities. Ma
rcion, in fact, is widely thought to have been the first Christian to have done so, to construct a closed, that is, a finalized, canon of Scripture, long before the New Testament that we know was established. Some scholars think that Marcion's decision to create a canon may have spurred on efforts of proto-orthodox Christians to follow suit.

  Of what did Marcion's canon consist? First and most obviously, it did not include any of the Jewish Scriptures (the "Old" Testament). These were books written by and about the Old Testament God, the creator of the world and the God of the Jews. They are not sacred texts for those who have been saved from his vengeful grasp by the death of Jesus. The New Testament is completely new and unanticipated.

  Marcion's New Testament consisted of eleven books. Most of these were the letters of his beloved Paul, the one predecessor whom Marcion could trust to understand the radical claims of the gospel. Why, Marcion asked, did Jesus return to earth to convert Paul by means of a vision? Why did he not simply allow his own disciples to proclaim his message faithfully throughout the world? According to Marcion, it was because Jesus' disciples—themselves Jews, followers of the Jewish God, readers of the Jewish Scriptures—never did correctly understand their master. Confused by what Jesus taught them, wrongly thinking that he was the Jewish Messiah, even after his death and resurrection they continued not to understand, interpreting Jesus' words, deeds, and death in light of their understanding of Judaism. Jesus then had to start afresh, and he called Paul to reveal to him "the truth of the gospel." That is why Paul had to confront Jesus' disciple Peter and his earthly brother James, as seen in the letter to the Galatians. Jesus had revealed the truth to Paul, and these others simply never understood.