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

by Bart D. Ehrman

  Paul understood, however, and he alone. Marcion therefore included ten of his letters in his canon of Scripture, all, in fact, of those that eventually came to be found in the New Testament with the exception of the Pastoral epistles: Timothy and Titus. We may never know why these three were not included as well. It may be that they were not as widely circulated by Marcion's time and that he himself did not know of them.

  Paul, of course, speaks of his "gospel," by which he means his gospel message. Marcion, however, believed that Paul actually had a Gospel book available to him. As a consequence, Marcion included a Gospel in his canon, a form of the Gospel of Luke. It is not clear why Marcion chose Luke as his Gospel, whether it was because its author was allegedly a companion of the apostle Paul, or because it showed the greatest concern for Gentiles in the ministry of Jesus, or, perhaps more plausibly, because it was the Gospel he was raised on in his home church of Sinope.

  In any event, this Gospel along with the ten Pauline letters formed Marcion's sacred canon of Scripture. Even such a short canon—no Old Testament and only eleven other books—created a problem for Marcion, for these eleven books do appear to affirm the material world as the creation of the true God, they quote passages from the Old Testament, and they show ties with historical Judaism. Marcion was fully aware of this problem and worked hard to resolve it. In his view, the reason these books had such passages is not because their authors were deceived into thinking that Judaism was important to the message of Jesus. No, it was only after the authors had produced these works that the offensive passages had been inserted into copies of their books, inserted by scribes who still did not understand Jesus' true message.

  In order to present the Scriptures in their original pristine form, then, Marcion was driven by the logic of his system to edit the passages that affirmed the material world as the creation of the true God, that quoted the Old Testament, that smacked of Judaism. In a manner reminiscent of the later Jefferson Bible, Marcion removed all the passages offensive to his views. In the words of his proto-orthodox opponent, Tertullian, Marcion interpreted his scripture "with a pen knife".

  Marcion's Fate

  Once Marcion had completed his literary creations, he strove to have his views accepted by the Christian world at large. Possibly that was part of the motivation for his relocation to Rome, the capital city, in the first place. It appears that Marcion called a council of church leaders together in Rome to present his views—the first such Roman church council of record. But after hearing what he had to say, the Roman elders, rather than welcoming his views with open arms, chose to excommunicate him from their community, refunding his large donation and sending him on his way. Marcion left the church of Rome, momentarily defeated but none the worse for wear and none the less convinced of the truth of his gospel.

  Marcion returned to Asia Minor to propagate his version of the faith, and he was fantastically successful in doing so. We cannot be sure exactly why, but Marcion experienced an almost unparalleled success on the mission field, establishing churches wherever he went, so that within a few years, one of his proto-orthodox opponents, the apologist and theologian in Rome, Justin, could say that he was teaching his heretical views to "many people of every nation" (Apology 1.26). For centuries Marcionite churches would thrive; in some parts of Asia Minor they were the original form of Christianity and continued for many years to comprise the greatest number of persons claiming to be Christian. As late as the fifth century we read of orthodox bishops warning members of their congregations to be wary when traveling, lest they enter a strange town, attend the local church on Sunday morning, and find to their dismay that they are worshiping in the midst of Marcionite heretics.

  Christianities in Contrast and Competition

  We might do well in this, our opening move into some of the diverse forms of Christianity of the second and third centuries, to consider a set of contrasts between the two groups of Christians we have considered here. Both the Ebionites and the Marcionites claimed to be followers of Jesus and through him of the true God; both of them thought that Jesus' death was the way of salvation (on this they would disagree with other groups—cf. the Gospel of Thomas); both of them claimed to trace their views back to Jesus through his apostles. But in most other respects, they stood at opposite ends of the theological spectrum.

  •

  •

  •

  •

  •

  •

  Here we have two groups with diametrically opposed views, both claiming not just to be Christian but to be true Christians. Both ultimately came to be condemned as heretical, not just by each other but also by the group that defeated them both, the proto-orthodox Christians who established themselves as dominant and determined what future Christians would think about God, Christ, salvation, and the Bible.

  What if it had turned out differently? What if the Ebionites had won these battles, or the Marcionites?

  From a historian's perspective, with all the advantages and disadvantages of hindsight, it has to be admitted that it is difficult to imagine either of these groups establishing itself as one of the dominant religions, let alone the "official" religion, of the Roman Empire in the way proto-orthodox Christianity eventually did.

  If the Ebionites had established themselves as dominant, then things would be radically different for Christians today. Christianity would be not a religion that was separate from Judaism but a sect of Judaism, a sect that accepted Jewish laws, customs, and ways, a sect that practiced circumcision, observed Jewish holy days such as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana and other festivals, a sect that kept kosher food laws and probably maintained a vegetarian diet.

  As a sect within Judaism, Christianity would have had its principal battles internally with other Jews who did not accept Jesus as Messiah; anti-Semitism as it developed, with Christians opposing Jews, members of a different religion, might well have never occurred. What we think of as historical developments from the fall of ("Christian") Rome to the early and later Christian Middle Ages would never have transpired as they did, nor would the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, historical developments that arose out of a specific set of circumstances of medieval Christianity. One could argue that the modern world would have been totally unrecognizable.

  All of this, of course, is rank speculation. We have no idea what exactly might have happened, whether life in our world would have been better, worse, or about the same. But it would have been wildly different. At the same time, as I have pointed out, it is hard to imagine it happening at all. Ebionite Christianity was at a serious disadvantage when it came to appealing to the masses. It attracted some Jews and some non-Jews who found Judaism appealing. But such people were never in the majority in the ancient world. The idea of large-scale conversions to a religion that required kosher food laws and circumcision seems a bit far-fetched. Had Ebionite Christianity "won" the internal battles for dominance, Christianity itself would probably have ended up as a footnote in the history of religion books used in university courses in the West.

  In any event, Ebionite Christianity was "left behind" at a fairly early moment in the history of the church. Proto-orthodox fathers like Irenaeus and Tertullian mention it and say a few things about it, but they do not see it as a serious threat, already by the end of the second century.

  What about Marcionite Christianity? Here one can both imagine and argue for real success within Christianity itself. Marcionite Christianity was a forceful movement in the early church, and one can readily see why. It took what most people in the empire found most attractive about Christianity—love, mercy, grace, wonder, opposition to this harsh, material world and salvation from it— and pushed it to an extreme, while taking Christianity's less attractive sides— law, guilt, judgment, eternal punishment, and, above all, association and close ties with Jews and Judaism—and getting rid of them. Had Marcionite Christianity succeeded, the Old Testament would be seen by Christians today not as the Old Testament but as the Jewish Scriptur
es, a set of writings for the Jews and of no real relevance to Christianity. So, too, Christians would not see themselves as having Jewish roots. This may well have opened the doors to heightened hostilities, since Marcion seems to have hated Jews and everything Jewish; or possibly even more likely, it may have led simply to benign neglect as Jews and their religion would have been considered to be of no relevance and certainly no competition for Christians. The entire history of anti-Semitism might have been avoided, ironically, by an anti-Jewish religion.

  Once again, other aspects of the history of the West would have been quite different, but it is not easy to see how. Certainly, the intellectual tradition of Christianity would have been distinctly different, as the Old Testament would not have been an issue of ongoing concern, and figurative, spiritual, allegorical modes of interpretation might not have developed within Christian circles (as Marcion was a literalist), leading to a history of literary analysis and a set of reading practices entirely different from what we have inherited. Economic and political history might have turned out to be quite different, since there would have been nothing in the sacred Scriptures, for example, to oppose lending money at interest or to promote the system of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Who knows what would have happened to the environment, given the circumstance that so much of modern environmental concerns stem ultimately from a conviction, filtered through many layers, but with Judeo-Christian roots, that God is the creator of this world and that we are its caretakers. Different, too, would have been so much of modern socialism, even (odd as it may seem) so much of Marxist theory, as it is ultimately rooted in notions of economic justice, fairness, and opposition to oppression that trace their lineage back to the Hebrew prophets.

  But once again, it is impossible to know where we would be if Marcionite Christianity had won the internal debates among Christian groups. At the same time, even if the Marcionites had established their supremacy within Christianity, it is extremely difficult to imagine them succeeding in becoming the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, the way proto-orthodox Christianity did. This is because of a unique feature that made Christianity initially palatable to Roman religious tastes (and to become ultimately successful, of course, something first has to be palatable). Unlike today, in the ancient Roman world there was wide-ranging suspicion of any philosophy or religion that smacked of novelty. In the fields of philosophy and religion, as opposed to the field of military technology, it was the old that was appreciated and respected, not the new. One of the most serious obstacles for Christians in the Roman mission field was the widespread perception—and it was entirely valid—that the religion was "recent." Nothing new could be true. If it were true, why was it not known long ago? How could it be that no one until now has understood the truth? Not even Homer, Plato, or Aristotle?

  The strategy that Christians devised to avoid this obstacle to conversion was to say that even though Jesus did live just decades or a century or so ago, the religion based on him is much, much older, for this religion is the fulfillment of all that God had been predicting in the oldest surviving books of civilization. Starting with Moses and the prophets, God had predicted the coming of Jesus and the religion founded in his name. Moses lived four centuries before Homer, eight centuries before Plato. And Moses looked forward to Jesus and the salvation to be brought in his name. Christianity is not a new thing, of recent vintage, argued the (proto-orthodox) Christian thinkers. It is older than anything that Greek myth and philosophy can offer; it is older than Rome itself. As an ancient religion, it demands attention.

  By embracing "true" Judaism, that is, by taking over the Jewish Scriptures and claiming them as their own, Christians overcame the single biggest objection that pagans had with regard to the appearance of this "new" religion. Had Christians not been able to make a plausible case for the antiquity of their religion, it never would have succeeded in the empire.

  But what about Marcion and his followers? They claimed that Jesus and the salvation that he brought were brand-new. God had never been in the world before. He was a Stranger to this place. There were no ancient roots to this religion, no forerunners, no antecedents. The salvation of Christ came unlooked for and unexpected, unknown to all ancient philosophy and unlike anything found in ancient religion. Given the reverence for antiquity in antiquity, in its quest for ultimate dominance, Marcionite Christianity probably never had a chance.

  Chapter Six: Christians "In the Know": The Worlds of Early Christian Gnosticism

  No form of lost Christianity has so intrigued modern readers and befuddled modern scholars as early Christian Gnosticism. The intrigue is easy to understand, especially in view of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library (see pp. 51-55). When that group of fieldhands headed by Mohammed Ali uncovered this cache of books in Upper Egypt, the world was suddenly presented with hard evidence of other Christian groups in the ancient world that stood in sharp contrast with any kind of Christianity familiar to us today. There was no Jesus of the stained glass window here, nor a Jesus of the creeds—not even a Jesus of the New Testament. These books were fundamentally different from anything in our experience, and almost nothing could have prepared us for them.

  The Nag Hammadi Library

  The library contained a wide array of books, many of them with understandings of God, the world, Christ, and religion that differed not only from the views of proto-orthodoxy but also from one another. There were new Gospels recording Jesus' words, some of them containing his secret and "truer" teachings, delivered after his resurrection from the dead, Gospels allegedly written by his disciples Philip and John the son of Zebedee, by his brother James, by his twin brother Thomas. Even though forged, these books were obviously written seriously and meant to be taken seriously, as providing a guide to the truth. So, too, the other books in the collection, including several different and internally diverse mystical reflections on how the divine realm came into being. Most of these documents assumed that there was not simply one God over all who had created the world and made it good. Some of them were quite explicit: This creation was not good, not in the least. It was the result of a cosmic catastrophe, brought into being by an inferior and ignorant deity who erroneously imagined he was God Almighty.

  Such documents thus gave expression to what so many people over the course of history have known so well firsthand—the starving, the diseased, the crippled, the oppressed, the deserted, the heartbroken. This world is miserable. And if there is any hope for deliverance, it will not come from within this world through worldly means, for example, by improving the welfare state, putting more teachers in the classroom, or devoting more national resources to the fight against terrorism. This world is a cesspool of ignorance and suffering, and salvation will come not by trying to make it better but by escaping it altogether.

  Some of the documents of the Nag Hammadi library not only express this view of the world; they also describe how such a world came into being in the first place, how we humans came to inhabit it (another cosmic catastrophe), and how we can escape. For many of these texts, this deliverance from the material world can happen only when we learn the secret knowledge that can bring salvation. (Recall: gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge; Gnostics are the ones who "know.") Some of these texts—ones that are most clearly Christian in their orientation—indicate that Jesus is the one who brings this knowledge. But knowledge of what? It is not the kind of knowledge that one can attain by empirical observation and experimentation, not the knowledge of external phenomena and how to manipulate them. It is knowledge of ourselves. Many of these texts preserve and present the view known to be held by groups of early Gnostics, that saving knowledge is "knowledge of who we were and what we have become, of where we were and where we have been made to fall, of where we are hastening and from where we are being redeemed, of what birth is and what rebirth."

  According to this view of things, we do not belong here in this awful world. We have come from another place, the realm of God. We are trapped here,
imprisoned. And when we learn who we are and how we can escape, we can then return to our heavenly home.

  No wonder these expressions of Gnostic religiosity have struck a resonant note among modern readers, many of whom also feel alienated from this world, for whom this world does not make sense, readers who realize, in some very deep and significant way, that they really don't belong here. For some groups of early Christian Gnostics, we in fact do not belong here. Our alienation is real; this is not our home. We have come from above, and above we must return.

  Despite their inherent interest, many of these Gnostic texts are not simple to understand. And that, of course, is as it should be: If the knowledge necessary for salvation were simple and straightforward, we all would have figured it out long ago. But this is secret knowledge reserved for the elite, for the few, for those who really do have a spark of the divine within them, a spark that needs to be rekindled and brought to life through the gnosis (knowledge) from on high, brought from one who has come down from the divine realm to remind us of our true identity, our true origin, and our true destiny. This divine emissary is no mere mortal. He is a being from the realm above, a divine emissary sent from the true God (not the ignorant creator who made this hateful material world in the first place) to reveal to us the true state of things and the means of escape. Those who receive, and understand, and accept these teachings will then be "Gnostics," those "in the know."