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

by Bart D. Ehrman

  Gematria was a way of interpreting words in light of their numerical value. In ancient languages, the letters of the alphabet performed double duty as numerals—unlike English, where we use Roman letters but Arabic numerals (except when we use Roman numerals). In the case of both ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew, every letter had a numerical value, so that in Greek, for example, Alpha was one, Beta two, Gamma three, etc. For this reason, every word written in these languages had a numerical equivalent—the sum of the numbers represented by its letters. Conversely, every number was represented by a sequence of letters.

  What, then, is the point of Abraham's circumcision of his 318 servants? In Greek, 318 is represented by the letters Tau, Iota, and Eta (TIH). For Barnabas, this number is quite significant because it clearly shows that circumcision prefigures the Christian religion. The Tau (T), he points out, is made in the shape of the cross, and Iota Eta (I H) are the first two letters of the name "Jesus" (IHSOUS in Greek). The true circumcision is thus not the literal cutting of the flesh of the foreskin. It is the cross of Jesus. Adherence to the cross is what makes a person a member of the people of God. And according to Barnabas, this is found in the Jewish Scriptures in the story of Abraham, the father of circumcision (9:1-8). Barnabas assures his readers that no one had ever heard a more excellent lesson from him (9:8).

  The letter of Barnabas was probably written around 130 ce. Somewhat later proto-orthodox writers followed its basic strategy of rejecting Judaism but accepting the Jewish Scriptures not only for their witness to Christianity but, notably enough, also for their rejection of Jews. Both Justin Martyr and Tertullian, for example, admitted that circumcision was given as a sign to set Jews apart from all other peoples. But for Justin it was to set them apart for persecution, and for Tertullian it was to show who would not be allowed into the holy city. (Tertullian was writing after the Romans had made it illegal for Jews to live in Jerusalem after the violence of the second Jewish uprising in 132-35 ce.)

  Other authors raised the ante even higher. One of the most eloquent homilies of the second century derives from a proto-orthodox orator named Melito, who lived in the city of Sardis in Asia Minor. His sermon text is the story of the Passover in the book of Exodus, and his mode of interpretation is figurative. He sees Jesus as the real Passover lamb, rejected and killed by his own people. But for Melito, Jesus was more than this; he was also God himself. The implications, for Melito, are severe: Israel is guilty of murdering its own God. Indeed, Jews who continue to reject Christ are themselves culpable of this hateful deed.

  With Melito we are at the beginning of a form of anti-Jewish hatred that had not appeared on the stage of human history prior to the advent of Christianity, built on a proto-orthodox view that the Jewish Scriptures witness to Christ, who was rejected by his own people and whose death, in turn, leads to their condemnation.

  Proto-orthodoxy and the Prophetic Tradition

  Clearly the Scriptures—originally the Old Testament, and eventually the books that came to form the "New" Testament—were ultimate authorities for the proto-orthodox Christians. But doesn't God speak in other ways as well, apart from these written texts?

  Ignatius appears to have thought so. Again, in his letter to the Philadelphians, he indicates that he himself was a direct recipient of a revelation from the Spirit of God, a revelation that confirmed his own convictions about the importance of the bishop:

  For even if some people have wanted to deceive me according to the flesh, the Spirit is not deceived, since it comes from God. For it knows whence it comes and where it is going, and it exposes the things that are hidden. I cried out while among you, speaking in a great voice, the voice of God, "Pay attention to the bishop and the presbytery and the deacons!" But some suspected that I said these things because I knew in advance that there was a division among you. But the one in whom I am bound is my witness that I knew it from no human source; but the Spirit was preaching, saying: "Do nothing apart from the bishop; keep your flesh as the Temple of God; love unity; flee divisions; be imitators of Jesus Christ as he is of his Father." (Ign. Phil., 7)

  Ignatius was standing in a solid tradition here, once again, as Christians connected with the Pauline churches—the earliest Christian churches of which we have any written record—understood themselves to be under the direction of the Spirit. Some in those churches had the gift of "prophecy," that is, the ability to speak direct revelation from God under the spontaneous influence of the Spirit (see 1 Cor. 14).

  For a time, this emphasis on direct revelation enjoyed success among proto-orthodox Christians. Some of their revelations came to be written down. Most famous, of course, is the revelation given to a prophet named John which, after some considerable controversy between those who valued the book and those who suspected it, came to be included in the canon of Scripture as the final book of the New Testament. But there were other revelations as well, including the one allegedly given to Peter in the Apocalypse of Peter, the guided tour of heaven and hell discussed earlier which also nearly made it into Scripture.

  And there was a series of visions given to a proto-orthodox prophet, Hermas, whose written account, the Shepherd, was accepted as an authoritative book by many Christians of the early centuries. Quoted by several church fathers as Scripture, the book, like the Epistle of Barnabas, was included as one of the books of the New Testament in the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus. It was eventually excluded, however, in part because it was known to have been written not by an apostle but by the brother of Pius, bishop of Rome in the mid-second century.

  The book takes its name from an angelic mediator who appears to Hermas in the form of a shepherd. Other angelic beings appear here as well, in particular an old woman who identifies herself as the personification of the Christian Church. These various figures communicate divine revelations to Hermas and, upon request, interpret their meaning to him.

  It is a long book—the longest Christian text to survive from the first two centuries—divided into a series of five visions, twelve sets of commandments, and ten extended parables. The visions and parables are enigmatic and symbolic; they are usually explained to Hermas as having a spiritual significance for Christians here on earth. The sets of commandments are somewhat easier to interpret, consisting mainly of direct exhortations to speak the truth, give alms, do good, and avoid sexual immorality, drunkenness, gluttony, and other vices.

  Indeed, the entire book is driven by an ethical concern: What can Christians do if they have fallen into sin after being baptized? A number of proto-orthodox Christians insisted that those who returned to lives of sin after joining the church had lost any hope of salvation (cf. Heb. 6:4-6). An alternative view is advanced by the Shepherd. This book maintains, on the basis of its divine revelations, that Christians who had fallen again into sin after their baptism had a second chance (but only one second chance) to repent and return to God's good graces. Those who refused to avail themselves of this opportunity, however, or who reverted to sin, would be forced to face the judgment of God on the day of reckoning that was soon to come.

  This was not the only "prophetic movement" in proto-orthodox Christianity driven by strict ethical concerns. The most famous one is of particular interest, because even though completely orthodox in its theological views, it came to be viewed as sectarian by its fellow proto-orthodox, in part because of its reliance on direct revelation from God rather than on written Scripture. The movement was called Montanism by its opponents, and its orthodoxy is made obvious by its constituency.' Its most famous convert was none other than Tertullian, a strict moralist whose theological credentials no proto-orthodox Christian could deny.

  The Montanists received their name from a proto-orthodox Christian named Montanus, a figure about whom we do not know a good deal. Later reports indicate that Montanus came from the town of Pepuza, a small and rather insignificant place in the province of Phrygia, in what is now west-central Turkey. He understood himself to be a prophet who received revelations directly from God. Old
traditions indicate that early on Montanus acquired two female prophetesses as followers, Maximilla and Prisca. We know of their prophetic utterances almost entirely as these came to be quoted in the writings of later authors. None of their own books survive—yet more early Christian texts lost to posterity.

  As might be expected of a group to which Tertullian was attracted, the Montanists were ethically quite strict, insisting, for example, that a Christian should not remarry after the death of a spouse but should be completely devoted to the church instead. Tertullian himself embraced this idea, and in fact wrote a letter to his own wife forbidding her to remarry should he precede her in leaving this mortal coil.' These strict ethics may have derived from the Montanists' view—evidently the burden of their revelatory utterances—that the end of all things was near and that people needed to prepare for it. To be sure, one could imagine that the expectation of the imminent end of all things might lead some people to enjoy themselves while they can ("eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die"); but this does not apply to those who expect the end to be a time of judgment rather than the point of annihilation. The Montanists urged people to prepare to meet their maker, with the full recognition that this might not be a happy prospect. In particular, Montanus believed that the new Jerusalem, to replace the old one characterized by the unbelief of the Jews, was to descend from heaven to Pepuza. That is where the Kingdom of God would arrive and Christ would then reign. Christians should devote themselves to its coming, standing up for their faith, even to the point of being martyred if necessary. Moreover, this end of the age was to arrive very soon. In the words of the prophetess Maximilla, "After me there will be no more prophecy, but the End."

  The end did not come, however, and that created problems. In a quite specific way, it created problems for prophets who had claimed a divine insight into the future course of events. There is nothing like a radical disconfirmation to make your group a laughing stock. But in more general terms, the failure of prophecy to materialize raised the awareness of a bigger problem of direct revelation for proto-orthodox Christians. How can we imagine that God has spoken to his prophets, even his theologically correct prophets, if their predictions do not come true? Moreover, how can divine teaching be controlled if it is a matter of personal inspiration? What prevents one person, even if well-intentioned and completely orthodox, from claiming a divine revelation that stands completely at odds with someone else's divine revelation? Or worse yet, what should be done with a direct personal revelation that contradicts the written revelation of Scripture? And what kind of tactical handles can be applied to heretics who claim revelation, direct from God? The Gnostics, of course, claimed secret knowledge. Why were their claims any less plausible than those of the proto-orthodox? In short, how can one determine whether a "prophecy" is from God or not? If it agrees with Scripture? But if Scripture is the key to everything, why does one need prophecy at all?

  It was not long before the proto-orthodox began asking these questions and started to recognize the problem with Montanism and other movements that stressed the direct inspiration of divine prophets. As a result, the movement was soon marginalized within proto-orthodoxy, despite its advocacy by so great a spokesperson as Tertullian. Inspired utterances were demoted from an authoritative position to a completely secondary, and highly dubious, status. In proto-orthodox circles, it was the written word, the texts of Scripture, that became the ultimate arbiter of theological and practical Truth.

  The Development of Proto-orthodox Theology

  In this brief survey of the major defining marks of proto-orthodoxy, I have saved for last the matter that many people consider the most important of all. "Orthodoxy" and "proto-orthodoxy," of course, are theological categories, as are their negative counterparts, "heterodoxy" (other opinion) and "heresy." Orthodoxy and heresy refer to views that are theologically correct and theologically incorrect. Theological categories are not necessarily the best way to describe social groups—Presbyterians and Episcopalians, for example, are classified not according to who is theologically right and wrong but according to their ecclesiological structures, as having churches governed, ultimately, by elders (presbyters) or bishops (episcopoi). And debates in Christian antiquity among various Christian groups also involved ecclesiological structures, just as they involved ethics, liturgical practices, patterns of authority, and numerous other matters. But a major component of these debates was theology in the purer sense—doctrines to be ascribed to, beliefs to be affirmed. In fact, probably nothing was more important in the early centuries of proto-orthodox Christianity than affirming the proper belief about God and Christ.

  It was the development and refinement of these proper beliefs that ultimately led to the orthodox doctrine of Christ as fully God and fully man and to the hallmark of orthodox belief, the doctrine of the Trinity, one God in three persons, distinct in number but equal in substance.

  We can trace the debates over doctrine to the earliest stages of proto-orthodoxy, again starting with Ignatius. Ignatius spoke of Christ as divine, for example, referring to "our God Jesus Christ, [who] is in the Father" (Ign. Rom. 8:3), or as "God come in the flesh" (Ign. Eph. 7:2), or of "the blood of God," by which he means the blood of Christ (Ign. Eph. 1:1). But he was equally and passionately committed to Christ being human, as is evident in two of his letters, one sent to the Christians of Tralles and the other to those of Smyrna. He knew that in both cities there was opposition to the proto-orthodox view that Jesus was somehow both divine and human; the opponents were docetists, who maintained that Jesus was divine and not at all human.

  And so in his letter to the Trallians, Ignatius warns against those who claim that Jesus "only appeared to suffer" (10:1) and insists, in response, that Jesus "was truly born, both ate and drank; was truly persecuted at the time of Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died... and was also truly raised from the dead" (9:1-2). So, too, in the letter to the Smyrneans, Ignatius attacks those who claimed that Jesus' passion was a sham, that he was not an actual flesh-and-blood human being who really suffered (2:1). Ignatius again denies that such persons are "believers" (2:1) and warns his readers not even to meet and talk with them (4:1). In opposition to their views, he insists that Jesus was "actually born" (1:1) and was "actually crucified ... in the flesh" (1:2), and he "genuinely suffered" and "genuinely raised himself (2:1). Even after his resurrection he was "in the flesh" (3:1), as evidenced by the fact that his disciples touched him and observed him eating and drinking (3:2-3).

  Some people have suggested that Ignatius may have been personally troubled by this christological issue because of how it related to his own situation. He himself was on the road to martyrdom. If Christ did not actually suffer in the flesh, there would be little reason for Ignatius himself to do so: "If what our Lord did is a sham, so is my being in chains. Why then have I given myself completely to death, fire, sword, and wild beasts?" (4:2). This appears to be part and parcel of the broader proto-orthodox agenda: The emphasis on Jesus' real flesh-and-blood existence and, as a consequence, his real suffering is tied to the claim that willingness to suffer physical martyrdom is somehow a proof of one's theological views.

  Some of the proto-orthodox, though, pushed the humanity of Jesus to an extreme and as a result came to be expelled from the church. We have already seen outsiders who did so, for example, Ebionites, who understood Jesus to have been fully human and not divine. We can never know for certain what drove them to insist on the point, although one might suspect that their resilient Jewishness forced them to affirm monotheism to such an extent that they could not conceive of Jesus also as God. But they were not the only ones in this particular camp. Sometime near the end of the second century, there appeared in Rome, from among the proto-orthodox ranks, a man named Theodotus, a cobbler by trade, but evidently an inordinately thoughtful and learned one. Claiming that his views represented those passed down by the disciples of Jesus to true believers ever since, Theodotus maintained that Jesus was "a mere man," born of the s
exual union of Joseph and Mary, but chosen by God at his baptism to be the savior of the world. Theodotus acquired quite a following in Rome, especially, as it turns out, among intellectuals who knew their secular logic, mathematics, and philosophy, and applied them to their theological perspectives. And the Theodotians' claim to represent the opinion of Christians high in the Roman hierarchy down to the time of Bishop Victor (189-98 ce) was taken seriously enough to be attacked by one of the leading Roman heresiologists of the day.

  These Roman "adoptionists" were eventually weeded out and their views castigated by those who insisted that, even though Jesus Christ was a man, he was not a "mere man"; he was also God. With that Ignatius, too, would have agreed.

  But if Christ is God, and God is God—how can there be only one God? This also caused huge problems for the proto-orthodox in Rome and elsewhere, bringing considerable dissension in their ranks. No one was more central to the dispute than Hippolytus of Rome, who maintained in Against Noetus that, after the Theodotians, the Roman church leadership had gone too far in the other direction in affirming Jesus' divinity and close connection with God; even the bishop of Rome (the "pope") was included in his castigation. The result of the outcome was remarkable. This was the first known split in the upper echelons of the Roman church leadership. Hippolytus, supported by his own followers, set himself up as the first antipope—the first, that is, to claim that the real pope's theological views had disqualified him from office and to step in, then, to assume the papal duties.

  The Roman bishops in question were Victor's successor, Zephyrinus (bishop 198-217 ce) and Zephyrinus's successor Callistus (217-22 ce). Hippolytus himself is one of our main sources of information for the conflict, and he has the honesty to admit that the majority of Christians in Rome supported the christological view he opposed. Both sides in the dispute, I should stress, agreed with the essential proto-orthodox notion that Christ was both God and man. And both were firmly committed to monotheism: There is only one God. But how can Christ be God and God the Father be God if there is only one God? Hippolytus's opponents solved the problem rather neatly. Christ was God the Father himself, come in the flesh to save the world that he created.