A couple of other writings, however, do survive in Jesus’s name from the first four centuries. Neither is probably best seen as a forgery, however, since neither seems to be making a serious claim to have been written by the historical Jesus himself. One is found in an account of Jesus’s death and resurrection called the Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea. According to this highly fictionalized narrative, one of the robbers crucified along with Jesus is pardoned for his sins and promised a place in heaven. From the cross, Jesus writes a letter to the angelic cherubim who are in charge of heaven, instructing them to let this fellow in when he arrives at the gates. This is a terrifically intriguing letter, but it really doesn’t seem as though the author intends for his readers to take it seriously as something written by Jesus.15 But I may be wrong.
Another writing by Jesus is a document discovered in 1945 with a collection of Gnostic texts called the Nag Hammadi library, about which I say more in the next chapter. This document is written in the first person, in the name of Jesus, describing the true nature of his crucifixion and the true way of having salvation through him. It is called the Second Treatise of the Great Seth (the first treatise, if it ever existed, no longer survives). Even though Jesus claims to be writing this book, it is the resurrected Jesus writing from heaven. For that reason it is not exactly the same thing as a forgery in the name of the earthly Jesus.
One brief letter that claims to have been written by the earthly Jesus, however, does survive. The letter was produced by someone who probably wanted to deceive his readers into thinking that it really was by Jesus. If so, it is appropriately called a forgery. This letter is part of a correspondence between Jesus and a certain King Abgar, of the city of Edessa, in Syria. Our first record of this correspondence is in the Church History of Eusebius, who claims actually to have uncovered both letters in the Edessan city archives. Eusebius indicates that the letters were written in Syriac, but that he translated them into Greek. He then cites them in full.16
The first letter is from the “Ruler Abgar” addressed to “Jesus the Good Savior.” Abgar indicates that he has heard all about Jesus’s miraculous healings and has concluded that Jesus must either be “God…having descended from heaven” or the “Son of God.” In either event, Abgar asks that Jesus come to him and heal him of his illness (without stating what it is). He adds that this would be of benefit to Jesus as well, as he has “heard that the Jews are murmuring against and wish to harm” Jesus.
Jesus writes a reply in which he indicates that Abgar is blessed for believing in him sight unseen and comments, “It is written about me that those who see me will not believe me, and that those who do not see me will believe and live” (see Isa. 6:9; Matt. 13:14–17; John 9:39; 12:39–40). In other words, the people among whom Jesus lived and worked (“the Jews” mentioned by Abgar) would not believe and would, therefore, not have life, but death. Jesus goes on to refuse politely Abgar’s request to join him in Edessa, as he has to “accomplish everything I was sent here to do” and then “ascend to the One who sent me.” Jesus does promise, however, that after his ascension he will send one of his disciples who will heal Abgar and “provide life both to you and to those who are with you.”
I assume this final sentence means that the disciple will teach them the gospel, which they will then believe for eternal life. According to later legends Jesus fulfilled his promise to King Abgar. An apostle was dispatched to Edessa, healed the king of his illness, and converted him and the entire city to faith in Christ.
The Abgar correspondence accomplishes an end similar to that of the Pilate Gospels, but in a far more subtle way. Here too Jews are attacked for their opposition to Jesus and are said not be heirs of eternal life because they reject him. This letter too, then, represents antagonism against the Jewish people for their role in the death of Jesus.
As a side note, the correspondence with Abgar appears to have had an interesting afterlife. As it was circulated throughout the early church, scribes changed it in places. Some of our surviving manuscripts of Jesus’s letter add a final line that informs King Abgar: “Your city will be blessed, and the enemy will no longer prevail over it.” This proved to be a very helpful promise to the citizens of Edessa. In the later fourth century a wealthy Christian woman named Egeria from the western part of the empire (either Spain or France) decided to go on a pilgrimage to visit all the sacred places of the Holy Land. During her journeys she kept a journal in Latin, which we still have today.17 On her travels, Egeria went to Edessa and saw the letters between Jesus and Abgar, as shown to her by the Christian bishop of the place.
According to the bishop, when the city of Edessa had come under attack by the armies of Persia, the then ruler of the city had taken the letter of Jesus, which promised that the city would not be conquered, and held it up at the city gate. The attacking army was thwarted by the magical power of the letter and retreated, eventually returning home to Persia without harming a soul. Later a copy of the letter was attached to the city gate, and no enemy had tried to attack it since. This, then, was a very useful letter to have on hand, even if it was forged.
Pagan Opposition to Christianity
AS WE TURN FROM considering antagonism toward the Jews by early Christians to opposition occasionally found among pagans, it is important to clear up a few common misconceptions about early Christianity in the Roman Empire. It is widely thought that from its early days Christianity was an illegal religion, that Christians could not confess their faith openly for fear of governmental persecution, and that as a result they had to go into hiding, for example, in the Roman catacombs. As it turns out, none of that is true. Strictly speaking, Christianity was no more illegal than any other religion. In most times and places, Christians could be quite open about their faith. There was rarely any need to “lie low.”
It is true that Christians were sometimes opposed by pagans for being suspicious and possibly scurrilous, just as most “new” religions found opponents in the empire. But there were no imperial decrees leveled against Christianity in its first two hundred years, no declarations that it was illegal, no attempt throughout the empire to stamp it out. It was not until the year 249 CE that any Roman emperor—in this case it was the emperor Decius—instituted an empire-wide persecution of Christians.
Before Decius, persecutions were almost entirely local affairs. More often than not they were the result of mob violence rather than “official” opposition initiated by local authorities. When there was official opposition, it was usually in order to placate the crowds, who did not approve of the Christians in their midst. But what was there not to approve?
For pagans, lots of things. Probably most important, as we have seen, pagans typically worshiped their gods because it was believed that the gods provided people with what they needed and wanted in life: peace, security, prosperity, health, food, drink, rain, crops, children, and everything else that made life both possible and meaningful. The pagan gods were not thought to require much in return. They did not insist that anyone actually “believe” in them, for example; and they did not have complicated “laws” that had to be followed. The gods more or less demanded that they be worshiped in appropriate ways; people were to perform the acceptable and traditional sacrifices that had long been part of their worship and say the prayers that were appropriate to them.
If people worshiped the gods, the gods took care of the people. It was an easy and helpful arrangement. But what happened when the gods were not worshiped, when they were ignored or flouted? Well, then things were not good. The gods could make life very miserable indeed if angered; they could bring war, drought, natural disaster, destruction, death. How, then, would people react if some kind of disaster struck a community? Their natural assumption was to think that one or more of the gods was angry and needed to be placated.
If a group of people in a community rejected the proper worship of the gods, insisted the gods didn’t exist, declared that they were evil demons, or simply refused to do the very minimal
requirements of public worship, this group would be the most susceptible to blame if disaster hit the community. The Christian church was just such a group. Other religions followed the ancient traditions that had been handed down in worshiping the gods. Even the Jews were widely seen as acceptable, even though they worshiped just their one God. They were known to perform sacrifices on behalf of the emperor’s well-being (rather than to him), and this was deemed appropriate. Moreover, their traditions were known to be ancient and venerable, and they did no one any harm, did not behave in socially inappropriate ways, and more or less kept to themselves. The Jews, then, were seen as an exception to the rule that the local and imperial divinities needed to be worshiped.
Christians, on the other hand, were not treated as an exception. Christians for the most part were either Jews who no longer seemed to keep the ancestral Jewish customs (so in what sense were they Jews?) or Gentiles who had abandoned the worship of the gods for the worship of the God of Jesus. Christians flat-out refused to worship the gods that had made the state great and that provided all the necessary and good things of life. If disaster struck a community that housed such Christians, they were the natural scapegoat for retribution. Punish the Christians and return to the gods’ good favor. Thus Tertullian’s famous lines about Christians being subject to persecution whenever disaster struck a community:
They think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is a famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is: Away with the Christians to the lion!18
Moreover, the Christian refusal to participate in state-sponsored worship was often seen as a kind of political statement that Christians were not concerned for the welfare of the state. This was considered antisocial and dangerous. Other aspects of the Christian religion contributed to this perception. For one thing, Christians worshiped a crucified man, that is, someone who had been condemned by the state. Wasn’t that a kind of political statement, that Christians were more or less thumbing their noses at the judgment of the state? And even apart from that, wasn’t it a matter of sheer lunacy to abandon the tried and true religion of the state in order to worship a crucified criminal?
Another problem was that, unlike Judaism, Christianity was such a new phenomenon. People in the ancient world loved nothing more than antiquity, and there was nothing that could authenticate a religion or a philosophy more than a claim to having ancient roots. The old was venerable; the new was suspect. And what was Christianity? It was the worship of a man who lived quite recently, in “modern” times. How could it possibly be true?
Not only was this new religion seen as dangerous and false; it was also seen as corrupt and perverted. Christians did not hold open meetings that everyone could attend. There were no church buildings that opened up on Sunday morning for anyone interested in learning about the new faith. Churches for the first two hundred years almost always met in private homes, and the meetings themselves were private. Only Christians attended. The religion was thought by others, therefore, to be secretive. And not only that, there were also rumors about what happened at these meetings.
For one thing, since the majority of Christians were from the lower, working classes, the weekly meetings as a rule took place either before the work day began, before dawn, or after it was over, after sundown, that is, when it was dark. These nocturnal meetings were rumored to be held among people who were “brothers” and “sisters” and who were known to “love one another” and to “greet one another with a kiss.” And they held periodic “love feasts” in which they celebrated the love of their god for them and their love for each other. If you wanted to start a rumor mill going about the early Christians, how much better could it get? Christians, whose meetings were not public, were thought to be engaged in licentious and incestuous activities, brothers and sisters gorging themselves, probably getting drunk, and holding love feasts in the dark.
Worse than that, it was reported that at these love feasts Christians ate the flesh of the Son of God and drank his blood. Eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a child? In addition to incest, Christians were thought to be committing infanticide and cannibalism, killing babies and then eating them.
These charges may all sound extremely far-fetched, but they were commonly leveled against Christians by their pagan enemies. In one early Christian source called the Octavius, written by the third-century author Minucius Felix, we read of a pagan who expresses his disgust at what happens at the Christian nighttime services. This view, according to Minucius Felix, derives from the famous pagan scholar Fronto, the tutor of the emperor Marcus Aurelius:
On a special day they [i.e., the Christians] gather for a feast with all their children, sisters, mothers—all sexes and all ages. There, flushed with the banquet after such feasting and drinking, they begin to burn with incestuous passions. They provoke a dog tied to the lampstand to leap and bound towards a scrap of food which they have tossed outside the reach of his chain. By this means the light is overturned and extinguished, and with it common knowledge of their actions; in the shameless dark with unspeakable lust they copulate in random unions, all equally being guilty of incest, some by deed, but everyone by complicity.19
But these weekly activities pale in comparison with their periodic sacred meals, celebrated with the new converts to the faith:
The notoriety of the stories told of the initiation of new recruits is matched by their ghastly horror. A young baby is covered over with flour, the object being to deceive the unwary. It is then served before the person to be admitted into their rites. The recruit is urged to inflict blows onto it—they appear to be harmless because of the covering of flour. Thus the baby is killed with sounds that remain unseen and concealed. It is the blood of this infant—I shudder to mention it—it is this blood that they lick with thirsty lips; these are the limbs they distribute eagerly; this is the victim by which they seal their covenant; it is by complicity in this crime that they are pledged to mutual silence; these are their rites, more foul than all sacrileges combined.20
These were the kinds of charges that Christians had to defend themselves against. If local mobs believed such things, it is no wonder that they opposed Christians, sometimes with violence.
And if the masses were against the people who participated in the new religion, what choice did local officials have but to oppose them as well? Local persecutions of Christians were designed less to punish them for their crimes than to get them to renounce their religion and return to the true fold. That is why, in virtually all the early accounts of the Christian martyrs, the judges ruling in the cases brought against Christians plead with them to recant their faith.21 These authorities’ goal was not to hurt the Christians, but to convince them to stop being Christian. Christians were seen as a threat to both the political health of the empire, to the extent that the gods could become upset and exact vengeance, and the fabric of society, through their grossly immoral behavior.
Christians of course defended themselves against all such charges, and did so in a number of ways. Starting in the second half of the second century, intellectual pagans started occasionally converting to this new faith. These were a new breed of Christian: literate, highly educated, trained in rhetorical skills, able to make sustained philosophical arguments and to write them down, and willing to take a public stand defending the faith. These intellectual defenders of the faith are normally called “apologists.” As we have seen, “apology” in this context is not an attempt to say you’re sorry; it comes from the Greek work apologia, which means “a reasoned defense.” Among the more famous Christian apologists of the second and third centuries were Justin Martyr of Rome, Athenagoras of Athens, Tertullian of Carthage, and Origen of Alexandria.
These authors insisted to anyone who would listen that Christians were not opposed to the stat
e, but were in fact fully supportive of the state. The state survived and thrived not because of offerings made to dead idols, but because of prayers made to the living God, who had power and sovereignty over all. The worship of a crucified man was not a statement of opposition to the state; quite the contrary, the state representatives—Pontius Pilate, for example—had emphatically declared Jesus not guilty. Jesus’s death was a miscarriage of justice perpetrated by the recalcitrant Jews, who had rejected their own messiah and therefore their own God. God had, as a result, rejected them in favor of his faithful people, the Christians. Rather than being a “new” religion, therefore, Christianity was quite ancient. It was in fact the true expression of ancient Judaism, a religion older than anything in either pagan philosophy or myth.
The best of the pagan philosophers, according to some of the apologists, shared views made sharper by the Christian message of the one true God, who had become manifest in his son Jesus. Jesus himself had taught an exceedingly high set of morals, and his followers were far more ethical than anyone else. Of course they did not murder infants; they did not even allow abortion. Of course they did not commit cannibalism; they were completely circumspect in what they ate and did not indulge in gluttony or drunkenness. Of course they did not commit incest; their love for one another was chaste. In fact, many of them practiced lifelong chastity, even if married. Of course they did not support fornication or adultery; for them, not only was it wrong to have sex with someone other than your spouse; it was a sin even to want to do so.
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