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

by Bart D. Ehrman

  In any event, whether or not the insistence on the primacy of a literal interpretation struck Gnostics as convincing, they did carry a kind of probative force for others in the debates, especially proto-orthodox sympathizers. For them, Scripture was to be interpreted following literal methods of interpretation, that is to say, letting the words say what they normally mean, and following widely accepted practices of grammatical construction. When they are so interpreted, the words yield the meaning of the author. And since these authors were all thought to be apostles, this kind of interpretive practice can reveal the apostolic teaching delivered once and for all to the churches that stand within the orthodox tradition of Jesus.

  Of all the weapons in the proto-orthodox literary arsenal, one was particularly barbed. The heretics, we are constantly told, not only corrupt the truth and the Scripture but they also corrupt other people and are themselves corrupt. The heresiologists insist that their opponents are morally reprehensible and sexually perverse. And their foul practices threaten the church, as they take the innocent and defile them.

  Eusebius's claim, seen already, that Simon Magus and his followers engaged in activities "more disgusting than the foulest crime known" is typical of these charges. Irenaeus, for example, says that the Gnostic followers of Valentinus instruct those who possess the divine seed (i.e., Gnostics with a spark of the divine within) to give their spirit to spiritual things and their flesh to fleshly things, making indiscriminate copulation not only permissible but a desideratum for those who are truly spiritual (Against Heresies 1,6,3-4); that the Carpo-cratians—whom we met in conjunction with Secret Mark—practice indiscriminate sex, indeed, that their theology compels them to violate every conceivable moral law and ethical norm so as to avoid being reincarnated time and again (since they must experience all things before attaining salvation; 1,25,4); and that the heretic Marcus excites attractive women by inspiring them to speak prophecies, after which they become putty in his lascivious hands (1,13,3).

  In making such charges Irenaeus appears to be applying heresiological techniques already found as early as the writings of the New Testament. Consider, for example, the small epistle of Jude, which opposes deviant Christians (we are never told what these people actually believed or taught—just that they are reprehensible) by indicating that they are licentious (v. 4), indulge in unnatural lust (v. 7), corrupt the flesh (v. 8), carouse together (v. 12), and follow ungodly passions (v. 18). As one commentator has pointed out, it seems hard to imagine that such wild folk could catch a congregation unawares (v. 4), making it appear that the author of this letter is himself falling back on traditional rhetoric to attack his unnamed opponents.

  Lying behind such slurs is the notion that those who side with God will lead moral, upright lives and be unwilling to do anything to defile themselves or others. The champions of the proto-orthodox cause are the martyrs, willing to bear the tortures of the flesh rather than do anything in violation of God's holy laws. How stark a contrast to the reprobates found among the heretics, especially the Gnostics who come in for the lion's share of the polemic—probably unfairly, given the ascetic lifestyles that they themselves appear to have endorsed.

  And yet the charges of immorality continued for as long as there were orthodox polemicists to make them. They continue today, among Christian groups inclined to accuse others of heresy. Often their false teachings are said to be matched by their promiscuous lives.

  Possibly the most shocking instance from the ancient world occurs near the end of the fourth century in the writings of Epiphanius, in his discussion of a group of Gnostics called (among other things) the Phibionites. It is an intriguing account in no small measure because Epiphanius claims to have known members of the group and to have read their writings. In Book 26 of his Panarion (Medicine Chest), Epiphanius outlines the beliefs of this group and, in shocking detail, describes their orgiastic and cannibalistic practices. The stunning detail has made scholars wonder: Could this account possibly be true? It may be worth our while to consider Epiphanius's polemic in detail, as an extreme instance of the orthodox penchant for maligning the character of their heretical opponents.

  Epiphanius claims that the Phibionites indulge in sumptuous feasts that begin with a special greeting: The men shake hands with the women, secretly tickling or stroking their palms underneath (Pan. 26.4.2). His description of this entrance ritual may be deliberately ambiguous: It has been read both as an erotic gesture and as a code designed to alert members to the presence of outsiders. But it is only after the company is sated with food and drink that the real festivities begin. Married couples separate to engage in a liturgy of sexual intercourse, each with another member of the community (Pan. 26.4.4). The union is not meant to be consummated, however, for the man withdraws before climax. The couple then collects his semen in their hands and ingests it together while proclaiming, "This is the body of Christ." When possible, the couple also collects and consumes the woman's menstrual blood, saying "This is the blood of Christ" (Pan. 26.4.5-8). If for some reason the woman becomes pregnant, the fetus is allowed to develop until it can be manually aborted. Then, claims Epiphanius, it is dismembered, covered with honey and spices, and devoured by the community as a special Eucharistic meal (Pan. 26.5.4—6).

  The leaders of the group who have already attained perfection no longer require women for these festive occasions. They indulge in homosexual relations with one another (Pan. 26.11. 8). Furthermore, Epiphanius informs us, members of the group engage in sacred masturbation. They can then consume the body of Christ in the privacy of their own room (26.11.1). This practice is reportedly justified by an appeal to Scripture: "Working with your own hands, that you may have something to give also to those in need" (cf. Eph. 4:28).

  It is clear from Epiphanius's account that these proceedings are not at all unrelated to the Phibionites' understanding of the cosmos and their liberation from it. They are said to subscribe to the notion, found among other Gnostic groups as well, that this world is separated from the divine realm by 365 heavens, each with its own ruling archon. Just as the divine redeemer who brought the secret knowledge of salvation into the world descended through all 365 heavens and then reascended, so too the redeemed must pass by all the archons, twice. The journey is foreshadowed here on earth through a kind of empathy, as the man, during the course of the sex liturgy, calls out the secret name of one of the ruling archons, effecting a kind of identification with him that allows for safe passage through his realm. Since each archon must be passed by twice, as Epiphanius is quick to point out, each of the Phibionite men can expect to seduce female devotees on at least 730 occasions.

  The connections between these alleged practices and the Phibionites' theology are not restricted to the notion of an ascent through the heavenly realms.

  As Epiphanius himself suggests, they relate equally to the basic Gnostic notion that the divine seed has been implanted in humans and needs to be liberated from this material world. The goal of human existence is to return to the divine realm, a return made possible only by the reunification of the divine seeds that are currently scattered throughout the world. Since the seed is passed on through the bodily fluids, that is, the man's semen and the woman's blood, these are to be collected and consumed, effecting the requisite reunification. When, however, the seed is left inside the woman, it develops into another human being, who represents then yet another entrapped particle of the divine. While procreation therefore defeats the goal of existence and leads to further entrapment and bondage, the ritualistic ingestion of semen and menses, or of fetuses, provides liberation.

  Can this tale of unbridled lust and ritual cannibalism be true? As a rule, in most of his polemical attacks on heretics, Ephiphanius has to be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. He constantly exaggerates, he invents connections between historical events that we otherwise know are unrelated, and he explicitly claims that his horrific accounts (there are others) are designed to repulse his readers from the heresies he describes (Pa
n. Proem 1.2). But a number of scholars have believed his account of the Phibionites, in part because he claims to have been personally acquainted with the sect. As a young man in Egypt he encountered two Phibionite women who tried to convert him to their group. His description of this encounter—written long after the fact—is intriguing, in no small measure because it is couched in sexual terms. The women were attractive and attempted to seduce him. After learning something of their beliefs, however, Epiphanius successfully repelled their advances (Pan. 26,17). He also indicates, as we have seen, that he then acquired and read a number of their writings, so that he could discuss their teachings from their own Scriptures.

  Aside from any general skepticism on our part, are there any particular reasons to question the reliability of Epiphanius's account of the Phibionites' sacred festivities?

  The place to begin is with Epiphanius's sources. I don't think anyone doubts that as a young man Epiphanius had personal contacts with members of the group. He explicitly recounts the advances of his two "seductresses," and there seems to be little reason to think that he made up the story, so far as it goes. On the other hand, this surely cannot be taken as some kind of warrant for the accuracy of his report concerning the group's private sex rituals. Epiphanius never says that he actually participated in or even witnessed any of the group's activities as a young man. Quite the contrary, he explicitly states that he spurned these women before they had enticed him into joining the sect. Among other things, this must mean that he was never admitted to the festivities. And it goes without saying that ceremonies of this kind would not have been open to the public.

  Nor can we think that the women had actually divulged to him what the group was doing behind closed doors. Epiphanius does say that they told him about their group (Pan. 26,18,2). But he is remarkably vague concerning what they told him, and he does not indicate that they revealed to him their secret rituals. And it seems implausible that these illicit proceedings would have been explained to potential converts during the preliminary stages of their acquaintance with the group. Even if the group did engage in such activities, they must have been kept secret to all but the initiates. And Epiphanius tells us in unequivocal terms that he spurned the group long before he would have been admitted as an initiate (26.17.5-7).

  Is it possible then that Epiphanius had uncovered descriptions of the Phibionite rituals in the group's sacred books? He clearly had read a good deal of their literature. He discusses several of their works throughout his treatment and quotes a number of their teachings. But he never claims that he found the group's orgiastic and cannibalistic practices described in them. And it stretches all credulity to think that they could have been: These books could hardly have been "how-to manuals." Nor would such literature have been publicly available at the local bookstall.

  Given the problems posed by Epiphanius's alleged sources, we do well to consider why he names them in the first place. In fact, as should be self-evident, his encounter with members of the group and his ability to refer to some of their writings serve to authenticate his description—not only of their beliefs but also of their bizarre practices. This authentication has proved remarkably successful. Even down to our own day his readers have accepted the report as trustworthy—disregarding the fact that he never says that he actually saw any of these things take place or even found them prescribed in the Phibionites' own books. But it appears that Epiphanius made up his accounts of the lascivious Phibionites, possibly creating bizarre ritual activities based on what he knew of their theological beliefs.

  In this connection I should perhaps stress once again that since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library we have been able to study the actual writings of a bewildering variety of Gnostic Christians. And far from condoning, let alone promoting, such outlandish moral behavior, these writings urge and assume just the contrary social and personal ethics. One of the few constants among all the Nag Hammadi tractates is their ascetic orientation. Gnostic Christians appear to have believed, as a rule, in punishing the body, not indulging it. Apparently then, Gnostics were consistently attacked by orthodox Christians as sexually perverse, not because they actually were perverse but because they were the enemy.

  And so the struggles for dominance in early Christianity were in no small measure carried out on literary battlefields. We have seen some of the important ploys used in the directly polemical literature of the period, most of it surviving from the proto-orthodox camp, although some remnants of the opposing forces are still, now, in clear evidence.

  Literature was used for more than direct assault, however. There were also indirect polemics, seen for example, in the forgery of apostolic authorities to support one point of view over another, in the falsification of existing texts in order to make them more clearly attest a cherished perspective or to prevent their "misuse" by those taking alternative sides, and in the collection of sacred texts into an authoritative canon of Scripture to be revered and followed by all those who subscribe to the true faith. It is these other less directly polemical ploys that we will consider in the chapters that follow.

  Chapter Ten: Additional Weapons in the Polemical Arsenal: Forgeries and Falsifications

  One of the distinctive features of early Christianity, in all its guises, was its literary character. Literature served to provide sacred authority for Christian belief and practice, to defend the religion against its cultured despisers, to unite local communities of believers into a worldwide church, to encourage the faithful in their time of suffering, to instruct them how to live, to entertain them with accounts of heroes of the faith, and to warn them against enemies within, promoting some forms of the faith and denouncing others. With the partial exception of Judaism, no other religion of the Roman Empire was so rooted in literary texts.

  This is not to say that Christians were necessarily more literate than other people. It is extremely difficult to gauge levels of literacy in antiquity, but the most persuasive estimates for the Greco-Roman world put the rates at around 10 to 15 percent of the populace in the best of times and places (e.g., in fifth-century bce Athens). The rates may well have been toward the lower or middle end of that range during the second and third Christian centuries. Moreover, if the pagan authors who attacked Christianity can be believed (their Christian respondents conceded the point), the majority of Christians came from the lower uneducated classes. So possibly the literacy rates among Christians were even lower than in the wider population. That, however, has little bearing on the question of the importance of literature for the movement, since in the ancient world, literature was meant to be read aloud, and "reading" a book most often meant "hearing" the book read by someone else who was literate. For Christians this would have happened all the time and in all sorts of social settings: church worship services, education "classes," social gatherings, and in the home.

  Given the literary nature of the religion, it is no surprise that a good deal of the conflict among competing understandings of the faith occurred in writing, with polemical treatises, sacred texts, legendary tales, forged documents, and fabricated accounts all having their role to play. We have seen already the polemical arguments back and forth, with remnants of what must have once been substantial Jewish-Christian and Gnostic attacks on proto-orthodox Christians, and still more substantial attacks from the winning side, the proto-orthodox, on heretical opponents of various kinds. To some extent we have also seen how forgeries were important in the back and forth. But to this point we have focused principally on "heretical" forgeries, for example, in the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Philip, and Mary, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, the letter of Peter to James, and the Pseudo-Clementine literature.

  Proto-orthodox Christians commonly charged heretical groups with forging just such writings in the names of apostles and companions of the apostles. Representatives of these other groups no doubt returned the compliment, charging the proto-orthodox with creating forged documents of their own. Unfortunately, as we have noted time and again, most of
the polemical claims of these other groups have been lost. But there certainly would have been grounds for the charge, as the practice of forgery was widespread on all sides, and not least the proto-orthodox.

  It should be stressed at the outset, however, that proto-orthodox forgeries (or heretical forgeries, for that matter) were not produced only for theological reasons, pure and simple. Early Christians, of every stripe, were interested in far more than doctrine. Some of the surviving forged documents betray these other interests. Occasionally this makes it difficult to determine the identity and theological affiliation of the forger. This is true for some of the most intriguing forgeries we have.

  Forgeries with Nontheological Agenda

  As an example, we may consider a noncanonical Gospel that deals with a period in Jesus' existence passed over, for the most part, by the canonical texts. The New Testament Gospels present only a few stories relating to Jesus' young life, for example, Matthew's account of the worship of the magi and the flight to Egypt and Luke's story of Jesus' visit to the Temple as a twelve-year-old. After the New Testament Gospels were written, however—and possibly earlier, although we have no hard evidence—Christians began telling stories about Jesus as a child. We are fortunate that later authors collected some of these stories into written texts, the so-called Infancy Gospels, which began to appear in the first half of the second century. For the most part, the legendary character of these fictions is easily detected.