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

by Bart D. Ehrman

  In his letters to the Corinthians, he is confronted with Christians again, from within his own church, who believe they have already experienced the full benefits of salvation and are already ruling with Christ as superspiritual humans. Some of their beliefs sound almost Gnostic; Paul has confronted some of his opponents face-to-face in Corinth and apparently experienced a public humiliation, suggesting that he may have lost the argument (see 2 Cor. 2:5-11,13:2). He threatens another visit in which, he promises, things will be different.

  His letter to the Romans is to a church that he did not found, and it is written to convince them that his gospel message is legitimate, so they will support him in his missionary endeavors further to the west, in Spain (see Rom. 1:8-15, 15:22-24). But why does he need to convince them? Evidently because they suspected him of teaching a false gospel. Someone else must have told them so.

  Later letters written in Paul's name presuppose internal tensions in his later churches: some kind of strange Jewish mysticism affecting the Christians of Colossae (Col. 2:8-23), a kind of fervent millenarianism in Thessalonians, where people have quit their jobs expecting the end to come right away (2 Thess. 2:1-12, 3:6-15), some kind of proto-Gnosticism in Timothy (1 Tim. 1:3-7).

  Problems with false understandings of the faith appear in non-Pauline books of the New Testament as well. James strongly opposes Christians who have taken Paul's doctrine of justification by faith to mean that good deeds are irrelevant for salvation. Revelation attacks antinomian (lawless) groups for bringing down the faithful. Jude and Peter castigate false teachers who have infiltrated the churches with their foul teachings.

  I cannot emphasize enough that all of these opponents in all of these communities identify themselves as followers of Christ. The Judaizers in Galatia, the proto-Gnostics of Corinth, those suspicious of Paul in Rome, the Jewish mystics of Colossae, the millenialists of Thessalonians, the extreme Paulinists of James, the libertines of Revelation, and the vilified nameless of Jude and Peter—what would all these groups of Christians have to say for themselves? We will never know for certain. But we do know that such people existed in the churches, understanding themselves to be Christian, maintaining that their views were not only believable but right. And they were acquiring large numbers of followers. In some cases, possibly most, they may have claimed to represent views held by Jesus' own apostles, the original Christian views. One would think that the Judaizers in Galatia, at least, could make a pretty good case.

  Even after the books of the New Testament had been written, the trend continues. There are the churches known to Ignatius in Asia Minor, all of them endangered by false teachers, either Judaizers or docetists or both. There are the heretics known to Irenaeus in Gaul, so numerous that he can't even count all the sects, let alone estimate their numbers, so nefarious that he has to devote five books to refuting their views. There are the heretics known to Tertullian in north Africa, who castigates his fellow proto-orthodox for being "scandalized by the very fact that the heresies prevail to such a degree" (Prescription 1), unwittingly admitting, thereby, that heretics could be found virtually everywhere. There are those known to Hippolytus in Rome, so influential that their false views had reached the highest echelons of the church administration, affecting the views of the bishop of Rome himself and threatening therefore to take over the entire church. And so it goes, on and on, for decades to come.

  Not only the widespread diversity of early Christianity but also the blurred boundaries between what counted as orthodoxy and heresy—another of Bauer's points—appears to be borne out by the evidence. To be sure, there were certain clear battle lines, especially for the proto-orthodox. Anyone who claimed that there were thirty gods or who denied that Jesus came in the flesh would not escape Irenaeus's plodding attacks or Tertullian's rapier wit. But there were numerous issues that remained vague and unresolved in the second and even third centuries.

  Even such basic questions as the nature of Christ's existence were not yet well defined. We have seen how this played out in the patripassianist controversy. But even on more basic issues there was an occasional lack of clarity. Docetic Christologies, of course, were strictly verboten among the proto-orthodox. Or were they? Both Origen and his predecessor, Clement of Alexandria, champions of proto-orthodoxy in their own day, expressed some very peculiar ideas about Jesus' body, peculiar at least to later theologians. Both maintained, for example, that Jesus' body could readily change appearance at will (e.g., Origen Serm. Mount 100). Clement went even further:

  But in the case of the Savior, it would be ludicrous [to suppose] that the body, as a body, demanded the necessary aids in order for its duration. For he ate, not for the sake of the body, which was kept together by a holy energy, but in order that it might not enter into the minds of those who were with Him to entertain a different opinion of him; in a manner as certainly some afterwards supposed that He appeared in a phantasmal shape. But he was entirely impassible; inaccessible to any movement of feeling—either pleasure or pain. (Miscellanies 6.71.2)

  In other words, Jesus ate simply to keep people from entertaining docetic notions about him, even though in fact he did not need to eat and could not feel pleasure or pain. It is hard to imagine how that is the same thing as having a real body of flesh and blood. And it is even harder to imagine that any such claim would be acceptable to the orthodox of later times. But there it is: Clement, a leading proto-orthodox spokesperson, with a Christology in the shadows but completely acceptable to other proto-orthodox Christians of his day.

  One final point needs to be made in support of Bauer's basic thesis about the relationship of orthodoxy and heresy. He was working, of course, only with the materials available to him at the time, in the early 1930s. Since then there have been additional discoveries, including entire documents that brilliantly confirmed aspects of his basic perspective, especially those of the Nag Hammadi library. Here was a collection of texts held dear by at least one group of Christians, possibly more, texts representing a wide sweep of alternative Christianities, by authors who assume, of course, that their views were right and that other views were wrong. Some of these texts attack proto-orthodox Christians for their false views.

  Christianity was far more diverse, the battle lines were far more blurred, the infighting was far more intense than we could possibly have known depending just on Eusebius and the classical view of the relationship of orthodoxy and heresy.

  The Victory of Proto-orthodoxy

  We are still left with a question that perplexed Bauer and many others since his day. Granted that earliest Christianity was so widely diverse, how did the side we have identified as the proto-orthodox establish itself as dominant? We have already observed several factors that contributed to this ultimate victory:

  (1)

  (2)

  (3)

  (4)

  There were other factors as well, which we will explore in the chapters that follow; but they relate in one way or another to each of the ones given above. It is striking that each of the four have one thing in common: All of them involve written texts. This may simply be due to an accident of history, that our surviving remains are principally textual. But there may be more to it than that, for it appears that most, possibly all, of the groups of early Christians placed a high premium on texts, making the use of literature a key element in the conflicts that were raging, as members of various groups wrote polemical tractates attacking their opponents, forged documents in the names of apostles to provide authorization for their own points of view, falsified writings that were in circulation in order to make them more acceptable for their own purposes, and collected groups of writings together as sacred authorities in support of their own perspectives. The battle for converts was, in some ways, the battle over texts, and the proto-orthodox party won the former battle by winning the latter. One of the results was the canonization of the twenty-seven books that we now call the New Testament. In the chapters that follow, we will consider various aspects of this literary
battle for supremacy, to see further how this one group emerged as victorious and established, then, the character of Christianity as it was to come down to us in the modern age.

  Chapter Nine: The Arsenal of the Conflicts: Polemical Treatises and Personal Slurs

  Doctrinal disputes in early Christianity were not fought with pickaxes and swords. They were fought with words. The spoken word was critical, we can assume, as daily conversations, catechetical teaching, weekly instruction, sermons, private arguments, and public debates must have swayed opinion one way or the other. Unfortunately, we have no access to what anyone actually said in the heat of battle, unless somebody took the trouble to record it. But the written word itself was also important, as theological opponents metaphorically crossed swords, attacking one another's views, casting aspersions on one another's character, appealing to earlier written authorities in support of their perspectives, forging documents in the names of these authorities when necessary or useful, collecting sacred books into canons and assigning them divine status.

  We have known all along about the written attacks of the proto-orthodox on Christians of other persuasions. The writings of such heresiologists as Irenaeus and Tertullian, for example, have long been available, even though others, such as those of the second-century writers Hegessipus and Justin, have, for the most part, been lost. But until recently we have not been well informed about the assaults of others on the proto-orthodox, with just a few scattered indications revealing what must have been lively battles. Because this opposing literature has been almost entirely destroyed or lost, the polemical literature from the period looks completely one-sided—so much so, that many readers have simply accepted the idea that "heretics" had little to say for themselves and were more or less obliged to submit to a literary lashing from which they could never recover. A closer look at the surviving remains, however, including some available only in more recent discoveries, suggests the more realistic view, that those who thought they were "right"—that is, every side in the disputes—stood up and fought for their views so that the war of words was waged heartily all round. Just because one side emerged as triumphant, we should not assume that its victory was assured at the outset or that its opponents were easily defeated. Even if his name, girth, strength, and dexterity are not recorded for posterity, the loser of a heavyweight bout may have been quite a bruiser in his time.

  Ebionites against the Proto-orthodox Paul: The Pseudo-Clementine Literature

  One of the indications that a healthy literary battle, rather than a one-sided onslaught, raged in the early Christian centuries comes to us in a set of writings known for many years but recognized as embodying polemics against proto-orthodox Christianity only in relatively modern times. We have already seen that Christians of the second and third centuries were fond of telling tales of the apostles, accounts of their missionary adventures after the ascension of Jesus, embodied now in such apocryphal accounts as the Acts of John and the Acts of Peter. So too, stories were occasionally circulated about companions of the apostles, such as the Acts of Thecla. Included among this latter kind of tale are legendary stories about Clement, the bishop of Rome and reputed author of l Clement. There are, in fact, two collections that survive, along with several other writings. The first is a set of twenty Homilies allegedly delivered by Clement, in which he discusses his travels and adventures, including his extensive contacts with the apostle Peter, who had converted him to faith in Christ. The other major collection is an account in ten books of Clement's journeys, framed by his search for lost relatives. The quest ends happily, thus giving the name to the account, the Recognitions. The relationship between the Homilies and the Recognitions is highly complex, one of the thorniest issues that scholars of ancient Christian literature have to deal with. Both accounts appear to go back to some kind of older document that was modified and edited in different ways over time. In any event, some of these writings about Clement embrace Jewish-Christian concerns; moreover, in doing so, they sometimes oppose, quite openly, other forms of Christianity, including proto-orthodoxy.

  All together these various works are known as the Pseudo-Clementine literature. The basic story line running through these books involves Clement's search for his family and for the truth. Clement is a member of an aristocratic family in Rome. When he is young, his mother is said to have a mysterious vision that compels her to leave town, taking along her twin sons, Clement's older brothers. Eventually his father leaves to track them down; he, too, never returns. Meanwhile, Clement grows up and devotes himself to a religious quest that takes him through various forms of pagan philosophy, none of which satisfies his intellectual curiosity. But then he hears that the Son of God has appeared in Judea, and he journeys off to find him. But he is too late. By the time Clement arrives, Jesus has already been executed. Clement meets the apostle Peter, converts to faith in Christ, and accompanies Peter on his missionary journeys. These are filled with adventures that include, most notably, a number of confrontations between Peter and the magician Simon Magus, whom Peter betters through the miraculous power of God. In the end, Clement finally becomes reunited with all of his family, and so harmony is restored. He has found the true faith, along with his parents and brothers.

  The heretic Simon Magus thus occupies an important place in these accounts. But in places, at least, it appears that the person Peter opposes is not the magician we know about from the Acts of the Apostles and the early heresiological reports. Here he appears to be a cipher for none other than the apostle Paul. That is to say, on some level it is Paul who is portrayed as the enemy attacked in these books. Peter's gospel, which insists on the ongoing validity of the Law of Moses for all Christians, Jew and Gentile, is here set over against the heretical notions of Paul, who is understood to preach a version of the Christian message that is, literally, lawless.

  The controversy between Peter and Paul presupposed in these fictional accounts is premised on a real, historical conflict between the two, evidenced in Paul's own writings. In particular, in his letter to the Galatians, Paul speaks of a public encounter with Peter in the city of Antioch over the issue of whether Gentiles who have become Christian need to observe the Jewish Law (Gal. 2:11-14). Paul reports the encounter and states in the strongest terms his own view, that Gentiles are under no circumstances to be required to keep the Law. As scholars have long noted, however, Paul does not indicate the outcome of the public altercation—leading to the widely held suspicion that this was one debate that Paul lost, at least in the eyes of those who observed it.

  The Pseudo-Clementines take up the debate to show Peter supporting the ongoing validity of the Law against Paul, thinly disguised as Simon Magus. The books are prefaced by a letter allegedly from Peter to James, the brother of Jesus and head of the church in Jerusalem (one of a number of letters we have that are forged in Peter's name). In it Peter speaks of his "enemy" who teaches the Gentiles not to obey the Law, and he sets out his own authoritative position in contrast:

  For some from among the Gentiles have rejected my lawful preaching and have preferred a lawless and absurd doctrine of the man who is my enemy. And indeed some have attempted, while I am still alive, to distort my words by interpretations of many sorts, as if I taught the dissolution of the Law. . . . But that may God forbid! For to do such a thing means to act contrary to the Law of God which was made to Moses and was confirmed by our Lord in its everlasting continuance. For he said, "The heaven and the earth will pass away, but not one jot or one tittle shall pass away from the Law."

  The Law of Moses, therefore, is always to be kept by Jew and Gentile. It does not take much to recognize who Peter's "enemy" is here, the one who opposes this view "among the Gentiles." The apostle Paul consistently portrayed himself as the apostle to the Gentiles and insisted that they not keep the

  The attacks on Paul and on what he stood for become yet clearer in portions of the Homilies. In one section in particular, Peter is said to have developed the notion that in the plan of God for humans
, the lesser always precedes the greater. And so, Adam had two sons, the murderer Cain and the righteous Abel; two also sprang from Abraham, the outcast Ishmael and the chosen one Isaac; and from Isaac came the godless Esau and the godly Jacob. Bringing matters down to more recent times, there were two who appeared on the Gentile mission field, Simon (Paul) and Peter, who was, of course, the greater of the two, "who appeared later than he did and came in upon him as light upon darkness, as knowledge upon ignorance, as healing upon sickness." (Homilies 2.17)

  A final example of this polemic comes in an imaginary scene in which Peter attacks a thinly disguised Paul for thinking that his brief visionary encounter with Christ could authorize him to propound a gospel message at variance with those who had spent considerable time with Jesus while he was still alive and well among them.

  And if our Jesus appeared to you also and became known in a vision and met you as angry with an enemy [recall: Paul had his vision while still persecuting the Christians; Acts 9], yet he has spoken only through visions and dreams or through external revelations. But can anyone be made competent to teach through a vision? And if your opinion is that that is possible, why then did our teacher spend a whole year with us who were awake? How can we believe you even if he has appeared to you? ... But if you were visited by him for the space of an hour and were instructed by him and thereby have become an apostle, then proclaim his words, expound what he has taught, be a friend to his apostles and do not contend with me, who am his confidant; for you have in hostility withstood me, who am a firm rock, the foundation stone of the Church. (Homilies 17.19)