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Notes from “The Core of Early Christian Spirituality: Its Relevance to the World Today”
A Symposium Sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge
April 8, 2006, Cambridge, Massachusetts
“The Core of Early Christian Spirituality: Its Relevance to the World Today,” a symposium sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge, was held at the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 8, 2006. The symposium featured Bart Ehrman, Marvin Meyer, and Elaine Pagels, who are among the foremost scholars of early Christian documents. I attended because of my interest in the relationship between psychology, religion, and spirituality, and because of the high quality and value that have characterized ISHK presentations on these and related topics over the past thirty-plus years (for more information see ISHK.net). As it happened, this seminar coincided with National Geographic’s program on the Gospel of Judas, which focused considerable news attention on early Christian documents and the three distinguished presenters in this symposium:
Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author or editor of 19 books on early Christianity, including a college level textbook on the New Testament, two anthologies of early Christian writings, and a study of the historical Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet;
Marven Meyer, Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies and Director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute, Chapman University, and author of numerous books including The Gnostic Discoveries, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, The Gospels of Mary, and Secret Gospels: Essays on Thomas and the Secret Gospel of Mark; and
Elaine Pagels, Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Fellow, preeminent figure in the theological community, and author of The Gnostic Gospels: A Startling Account of the Meaning of Jesus and the Origin of Christianity Based on Gnostic Gospels and Other Secret Texts, and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, among others.
(A note about my notes: I started the symposium with a fully charged laptop, but couldn’t find an outlet by the pews in the church. My Powerbook’s charge lasted through most of the presentations, but I had to switch to longhand toward the end. I type pretty quickly, but couldn’t keep up with everything each speaker said, and of course some comments impressed me more than others. I certainly missed some content, and regret any mistakes. The bottom line: these are my personal notes, not verified by the speakers. Quotes that I’m certain of are in quotation marks. Statements that I think are what the speaker said but am not certain are exact are not. Finally, I’ve tried to capitalize respectfully for readers from religious traditions; coming from a scientific tradition, such terms as “Gospel,” and even “God,” would not necessarily be capitalized.)
I. Robert Ornstein: Introduction
ISHK president Robert Ornstein, author of many books on psychology and human nature including The Psychology of Consciousness, The Nature of Human Consciousness, and The Right Mind, introduced the symposium as the first in a series about spirituality and its links to religion and other topics. The book “The End of Faith,” by Sam Harris, argues that religion gets in the way of spirituality, exemplified by such conflicts as that between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, Sunnis and Shias in Iraq, etc. Pope Urban II, recruiting soldiers for the fourth Crusade, said that killing in this case was not only positive, but gained absolution from sins.
Earlier ISHK seminars on “Psychologies East and West,” the last one in 1984, looked at interconnections between spirituality and religion. Now it is time to pick the topic up after a hiatus. For example, are terms like God and Angels really metaphors, or do they relate to states of mind? The value of religion in supporting health has been studied (Ornstein mentioned a book here but I missed the title), rather than the evolutionary aspect of religion. The recent discovery of a missing link between fish and land animals prompted the New York Times to draw a link between evolution, religion, and literalism.
The three speakers today have pretty much demolished the idea that there was a single beginning to spirituality. Rather, there seem to have been disparate groups. Bart Ehrman has shown us how many different early Christianities there are; some were selected, others rejected. His lecture course, “From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity” (Teaching Company, www.Teach12.com), shows how a small group of people, who could be likened to followers of Jim Jones, who thought he would become the next Christ, can suddenly become dominant over a couple of hundred years.
II. Bart Ehrman: Jesus and the Apocalyptic Vision
Ehrman began by quipping that he was glad to talk about something beside the Da Vinci Code (referring to his popular book, “Decoding Da Vinci: The Facts and Fiction Behind the Da Vinci Code”) and Gospel of Judas.
Ehrman began with some personal history. “I have solid (religious) credentials” was Episcopalian, “had a born-again experience in high school and went to Moody Bible Institute, then on to Wheaton College and Princeton Theological Seminary,” driven by his interest in Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. But “I eventually left the Church, abandoned my Christian faith, and consider myself an agnostic today.” “The greatest obstacle to spirituality for me and millions like me is pain and suffering in the world...my struggle with the problem of suffering was central” to his eventual decision to leave the Church.
“I tutored a Cambodian family in English who had gone through the killing fields.” Professionals in Cambodia--and anyone who wore glasses, and were thus assumed by the Pol Pot regime to be professionals, because they read--were executed. The U.S.A killed an estimated. 750,000 Cambodians in the Vietnamese war. Civil war followed, and over 2 million died after Pol Pot came to power. “Nearly half of the population was killed, most in very ugly ways.” Ehrman went on to mention the Holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia, “and so many others,” including examples of suffering and death through accident, illness, and natural disaster.
The question of “how people of faith can keep the faith” in the face of human suffering is “a very ancient question,” and different biblical authors had different, and incompatible, answers to the problem of human free will and such dreadful, often humanly caused, events. “I no longer find any answer completely compelling.”
The apocalyptic answer to the problem of suffering was propounded by Jesus, Paul, and the early Christians. It does not ignore the problem of suffering, or wish it away.
Historical precedents of apocalypticism: Ancient Israel was based on a set of traditions that God had intervened on behalf of the people to overcome pain and suffering and make them special. God responded to the prayers of his people by raising up a savior, Moses. (etc.) But Exodus theology didn’t hold up after Israel was repeatedly overrun. This led to the “prophetic” explanation: We have gone astray, so God is punishing us. (Read passages from Amos: “On the day I punish Israel for its transgressions....”). In the prophetic explanation for the devastations of Israel, God inflicts punishment on his people in order to get them to repent. If they do, he will relent, and work miracles of utopian existence for them.
But what happens when the people turn back to God, do what is right, and continue to suffer? The prophetic solution doesn’t have an answer to that. About the second century BCE Jewish thinkers began to modify the prophetic solution, after a series of conquests of Israel. Antiochus, ruler of Syria, which ruled Israel, wanted to unify the culture of everyone in his lands, and he made it illegal to follow Jewish rituals (circumcision, keeping kosher, etc.). So, by following God’s law, people suffered.
To explain this, Jewish thinkers developed the idea of apocalypticism, from a Greek word meaning, “revealing.” God had revealed when the end of suffering would come. God wasn’t causing the suffering of the people of God; the forces of evil, of supernatural nature, were causing the suffering. Jewish thinkers began to talk about a devil. God had relinquished control of the world to the powers of evil, but it won’t go on forever. God will take back control and bring in a new and wonderful world to come for the people who obey him.
Four characteristics of apocalypticism: 1. It was dualistic--there were powers of good and of evil, of God, with His angels and archangels, and the devil, with his minions. Sin and death are not human activities, but those of a demonic power trying to enslave you. Death is a cosmic power trying to enslave you, to annihilate you. This age is controlled by the power of evil. At the end, after a cataclysmic break, God will destroy the forces of evil and the age to come will appear. 2. It was pessimistic about the possibilities of life in this world. Things are bad, they’re going to get worse, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it; the powers of evil are in control and it will get worse. 3. It was confident of an ultimate vindication. At the end of this age, God will vindicate himself by intervening, destroying the forces of evil, and bringing in the good kingdom. There’s nothing people can do to facilitate this. We’re not going to bring it about through improvements--we can’t. Some say a messiah figure, sometimes called the Son of Man, will bring about the new kingdom, bringing about a resurrection of the dead. So, on the last day, it will be revealed that you can’t get away with bad behavior, even if it worked for you in life. Only the good people will be resurrected (with God). Bad ones will be resurrected in the body and suffer. 4. The apocalypse was immanent, near at hand: the end of the evil age will happen very soon; within our lifetime, maybe next week.
Jesus said this generation will not pass away before all these things take place. He was probably a Jewish apocalypticist who believed that God would intervene to overthrow the powers of illness and death. “Truly, some of you alive today will not taste death before the Kingdom of Heaven (arrives).” Albert Schweitzer, in “The Quest of the Historical Jesus,” argued that Jesus was an apocalypticist. His first words recorded, in Mark, are “The time has been fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news.” Jesus taught that a Son of Man would come on the clouds of heaven in the presence of the holy angels. There would be a cataclysmic end of the age and the Son of Man will appear. There will be a radical judgement: those oppressed now will be exalted then, so the first shall be last and the last first. “Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be ...at the end of the age (Matthew 13)..then the righteous will shine...” There will be cosmic upheavals and judgement of people; and soon, in this generation.
There were a lot of apocalypticists in Palestine in Jesus’ time, including the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Apostle Paul, our first Christian writer, views Jesus as coming back, in his own lifetime, to judge the people of the earth.
Apocalypticism is a worldview that needs to be taken seriously, even today. A lot of my students think Jesus is coming back next week; I suggest to them they should still study for their final exam.
Some strengths of Apocalypticism: it takes suffering seriously, instead of giving a facile view, ignoring the problem. The entire apocalyptic view is propounded to understand suffering. It also takes evil seriously, sees evil as real, and dangerous. The ultimate God stands opposed to evil, intending to destroy it. Those who side with God will also oppose evil, and work to root it out. An apocalyptic view should mobilize people to oppose evil. Also, evil and suffering are not the end of the story, and pain is not the final experience: God is the final experience, and has the last word.
Questions:
Question: Is your approach more or less universally accepted? Answer: I’m not sure, I came up with this one myself. ( A discussion followed about whether apocalypticism is a wisdom movement or a prophetic movement. Ehrman thinks this is a false dichotomy.)
Question: Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God within, and changed what he said over time. Answer: The Kingdom of God didn’t happen. Some people say the Kingdom of God referred to something within, “the Kingdom of God is within you.” That’s a mistranslation, “The Kingdom of God is among you” is the real translation. He’s talking to the Pharisees. He means his own presence constitutes the Kingdom of God.
Question: Comment on present day use of “Son of Man” as a better title for the position that Jesus talked about. Answer: That title is the thorniest issue in New Testament studies, a quagmire, very complicated. When used today, it isn’t used in the way it was in antiquity. Today, Son of Man refers to Jesus’ humanity, and Son of God refers to his divinity. But in antiquity, it was flipped, the Son of God was human, and Son of Man was divine. The Son of Man sayings that go back to Jesus are allusions to passages in the Old Testament, the four beasts that come up out of the sea that represent kingdoms that wreak havoc, and after that you get One like a Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, the kingdom is taken from the beasts and given to the Son. By Jesus’ time, this was taken to mean a future coming judge.
Question: Could you talk about evil, and the dualism of rulership? Answer: God and this other force? (Questioner says, “Yes)”. That’s at the heart of the apocalyptic vision. These people couldn’t understand how God could be in control if there’s so much suffering. If God wasn’t in control, it must be the devil, a force of evil that needs to be contended with, which, in the end, God’s going to destroy. The real question is, why is the devil in control now? It remains a mystery, although “Adam and Eve sinned,” etc., are offered as explanations. But it’s not a mystery about how its going to end.
Question: Many Christians today talk about this vision, the coming rapture. The U.S.A. doesn’t have to help the world because the apocalyptic kingdom is coming. Is there a response to the vision that says,” Let the world go to hell?” Answer: The “Left Behind” series by Timothy LeHay probably sold more books than the Da Vinci code. Apocalyptic views can lead to a suspension of social obligation. I’m arguing that it ought to go in the other direction. The early Christians were concerned about widows, orphans, the poor. Why? What apocalypticism shows is that God is opposed to the forces of evil, and if you’re one of God’s people you will oppose war, famine, drought, etc. I don’t think it should lead to social apathy, if properly understood.
Question: There’s a view that these views come from Zarathustra, and came into Judaism during the Christian period. Answer: Persia overtook Israel and some people think Zoroastrian dualism influenced Jewish thought. In apocalyptic thinking, God created everything and something happened to mess it up, which is different from Zoroastrianism, but there could be some sort of influence. Apocalypticism didn’t kick in during the Persian period (of rule over Israel), but during the Syrian period.
Question: How do you view the story of Job? (Questioner describes the story of Job and says Job concludes, “My false faith brought this upon me”. Questioner adds that astrological signs are meaningful regarding the end of this age.) Answer: I didn’t read the Bible (astrologically) but it’s an endless resource. About the story of Job, the devil didn’t show up in the Hebrew Bible. Satan does show up, not as the devil, but as “the adversary.” In Job, Satan is one of God’s advisers, and he and God make this bet about Job. The prose part and poetry part in Job look like they come from different authors in different periods.
Robert Ornstein:
The next two speakers will talk about discoveries since the Second World War. The age of the world was thought to be 4004 BC, calculated by a Bishop, who gave an exact date--9:00 AM, Monday, Oct. 23, 4004 BC--as the creation date of the world. How did this idea get overturned? In part because of geological discoveries.
Two discoveries in the Middle East, at Nag Hammadi and Qumron, have brought to light a lot of documents about early Christianity. An Egyptian peasant came upon what came to be known as the Nag Hammadi corpus, some of which were lost, but since 1945 have become published, and many of them have revolutionized our view of some of the components of early Christianity. Dr. Marvin Meyer is one of the leading authors in this area, author of The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, the Gospel of Mary, The Secret Gospel of Thomas, (others).
III. Marvin Meyer: Mary Magdelane in the Gnostic Gospels
(Meyer is Director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute). Albert Schweitzer was no saint, but tried very hard to live with reverence for life. I believe reverence for life is an ethical point of view that deserves a hearing in our day.
Jesus was committed to this point of view that the world was coming to an end, and Schweitzer said Jesus had this commitment and was wrong. But he taught things that really mattered, for that reason. Schweitzer built his ethic around the ethical concerns of Jesus, whom he felt was wrong about some things but right about others.
I went through Calvin College, (where) we thought we were more evangelical than Wheaton My parents were Dutch Reform, and my Father always wanted to be a minister, despite only having gone through 8th grade. Two children passed away, two others survived to adulthood. We would get down on our knees by the side of the bed with Father and pray, (may one brother or the other) choose to enter the highest profession, eg., become a minister. I was the only person in my kindergarten who was pre-seminary. I went to a Christian high school in Grand Rapids, then to Calvin College,
became a Greek major because that was the language of the New Testament; I was going to do God’s work. Then I went across the lawn to Calvin Theological Seminary. In the late 60’s, I also discovered that there was more to the world than the Dutch Reformed (worldview). I had been student body president, protested the war in Vietnam, and so began to have some questions by the time I entered seminary. I gradually lost interest in the profession, but studied and was taught, went out to preach (as an alternate preacher, filling in when the resident preacher was away). By the time I graduated from seminary it was clear there should be another career for me. I went on to grad school at Claremont, took a course in Coptic language, where they were working on the translation of the Nag Hammadi texts.
What’s happened lately is a phenomenal interest, academic and popular, in some of these new texts. The Da Vinci Code has put some of these texts before all of us, in an exciting, though not very good, novel. People are asking about the Gospel of Thomas, of Mary, and so on. Mel Gibson might deserve a comment here. He produced a bloody movie that was a horrific movie from a number of points of view, but it attracted a lot of attention, and there are a lot of people who are part of the movement in popular culture to raise interest. The Gospel of Judas, which just came out, is number three on Amazon. Who would have imagined that this dusty papyrus book, from scraps, would have received this much attention?
In the beginning, there is diversity. At the beginning of the Jesus movement itself, there must have been diversity. This must lie behind the different assessments of Judas himself. (Meyer then paraphrases an early Christian historian--I think Irineus-- who constructed an orthodox history of Christianity which couldn’t possibly have been how it really happened.) The orthodox folks were the majority, and the heretics were the minority. The orthodox ones decided on theology and the character of the church. This was essentially a political way of assessing what is orthodox and what is heretical.
Mary of Magdali: the modern stories of Mary are interesting and compelling, but if you like the modern ones, the ancient ones are even better. In the first century documents, the Gospels of the New Testament, we find references to the story of Mary Magdalene as a kind of sub-plot. We think of her at the cross with the other women, or at the tomb of Jesus, where she is described as having a place and observing that the stone in the tomb has been rolled back. (Reads from Mark, written about 70 CE, chapter. 16, 1-8 (saying this was probably the original ending of this gospel, which has been subsequently extended). The apostles all ran away, there are only a few women around at the time, but they fled from the tomb (where a youth in a white robe told them that Jesus was not there but had been [raised?]). And didn’t say a word to anyone, for they were afraid. That’s where the Gospel of Mark comes to an end, although others have added fanciful, feelgood endings.
There are so many Marys in the early texts that some later ones have magically combined them into a super-Mary.
Mary Magdalene is not a part of the twelve disciples (in the New Testament), but is close to Jesus. Luke, chapter 8, v 1-3 (reads), places her among other women who were followers of Jesus, supporters of the apostles, “the 12”. Despite being agreed that there were 12 disciples and they were all men, the early Gospel writers didn’t always agree on all their names. The men are the main players, the women off to the side. But there are hints that these texts have been carefully edited and written, and that what has been edited, but couldn’t be entirely edited out, is important. For example, Mary Magdalene is the first one mentioned when the women are mentioned, usually, except for the mother of Jesus. In the Gospel of John, the meeting of Mary and Jesus, outside the tomb, with the risen Christ, the story of that meeting is very much like some of the poetry in the Song of Solomon, chapter 3. The account in the Song of Songs is overtly sexual and erotic. (There could be an erotic story behind the meeting of Mary and Jesus that has been edited out.)
And, who is “the beloved disciple” in the Gospel of John? Sometimes its not clear that John is “the beloved disciple.” Lazarus is a kind of beloved disciple too. We have too many beloved disciples, in the Johnian tradition. When we open up other Gospels, we find out that Judas, Thomas, or maybe James, might be the beloved disciple. Or maybe Mary Magdalene, as the Gospel of Mary, and of Philip, suggest. Some scholars have been pursuing that question. Dr. Esther De Voor (sp?), a Dutch scholar, is one. Who is standing by the cross in that key part quoted before--Jesus, on the cross, says to his mother “Woman, behold your son,” and to “the beloved disciple”, “behold your mother.” Some say that Jesus is saying, to Mary Magdalene, “look at the woman you are to associate with as your mother,” and he is saying to his mother, about himself, “Woman, behold your son.”
Dr. Dennis McDonald, who teaches at Claremont, gives the story a new twist, suggesting that Mary Magdalene’s story is not the story of any historical person at all, but really the story of Andromache, the wife of Hector, taken out of Homer’s Iliad, adapted to what is going on here. I tell you that with great caution and severe misgivings, but it is interesting. He says the authors of the Gospels went to school and learned to read and write Greek by studying Homer. The Gospel of Mark, which is the foundation for the other synoptic gospels, is written partly in imitation, an adaptation of Homer. The death of Jesus is patterned after the deaths of Hector and Achilles. In Homer, Hector is killed and his mother hears the lamenting from the tower. Mary is from Magdali, which means “tower,” so Mary is “from the tower.”
There’s a new story of Mary in the Gnostic texts, partly in the Gospels of Thomas, of Mary, and of Philip. It says that Jesus loved Mary more than the other women, more than the other disciples. The Gospel of Philip says Mary Magdalene was the companion, partner, of Jesus. It says Jesus loved Mary and used to kiss her often on her-- and then there is a break in the papyrus. In the Dialog of the Savior, it says that Mary was one of the central conversation partners of Jesus. She is called a disciple of Jesus, and in these texts, there isn’t just a circle of 12 young men, but there are various men and women, not necessarily 12, and not all men. But Mary is in the circle, and may be the closest to Jesus, certainly is a soul mate of Jesus. She is very close to Jesus, and has her own words of wisdom. It is said, in the Gospel of Mary, that she understood Jesus as none understood Jesus. “When the blessed one, Jesus, saw the disciples, he greeted all of them...the Child (Son) of Man is within you, follow that, go and preach the good news of the kingdom, and do not establish law.” This is a different Gospel, not an apocalyptic one.
There is another story of Mary Magdalene that is now coming to light in these new texts. “’Tu Es Petrus--You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church’”--is one story. But the story of Mary is another kind of Gospel, another approach with other characters, another Christian story about a way of understanding and imagining: You are Mary, and look within yourself, and you will find the Child of Humankind within.
The Manichaean Psalm Book has a poem that focuses on Mary and the place of Mary, from the Psalms of Heraclitis, written in Coptic: “Mary, Mary, know me but do not touch me, dry the tears of your eyes and know that I am your master....your God was not taken away as you thought in your pettiness...I did not appear to you before I saw your tears and grief....be my messenger for these lost orphans, hurry with joy, go to the 11...(he sends Mary to take the message to the apostles)...if you see that they do not respond,, make Simon Peter come to them (Peter is 2nd in command, behind Mary, in this Psalm).
(Note: A necessary bathroom break resulted in my missing Meyer’s question period and most of Ornstein’s introduction of Elaine Pagels.)
IV. Elaine Pagels: Beyond Belief: A Different View of Christianity
I came to graduate school looking for what Jesus really taught on the hills of Galilee. I felt that if I kind of listened in, I could find a golden world of early Christianity. Instead, I found a stranger, more exciting world of these secret texts. These texts had been circulated in the ancient world. Irineus said there could only be four Gospels, because there were four corners of the universe and four winds, and only these Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, or their disciples. But many scholars would not agree. We know that these Gospels were written 40-60 yrs. after the death of Jesus, and were probably not written by the people whose names they bear, just like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and Judas.
The Gospel of Thomas was first published in 1959, and was regarded by authorities as a false Gospel, heretical, which must have been written later than the received Gospels. The four accepted Gospels are dated from year 70 to year 100. The Gospel of Thomas was dated later just because it was assumed that it must have been. Authorities looked for dualism and nihilism in Thomas, and when they didn’t find it they read it in. Then some biblical study authorities dated it earlier; Kester (sp?) has dated it to the year 50, which is earlier than Mark.
If we don’t know which sayings go back to Jesus, Thomas does tell us a great deal about the early Christian movement, how followers of Jesus were thinking about the Gospel of Jesus and what it meant.
Jesus is speaking (as when he says, in Thomas, “I am the light that was at the beginning of all things, split a log or lift a rock and I am there.”) perhaps in reference to Genesis and other references to God as light. The Gospel of Thomas suggests that you can look to Jesus for that light, but also within yourself, if you look deeply enough, to find that light. When Jesus tells disciples to answer the question (which might be asked of them), Who are you and where do you come from, he’s not talking about where you come from in the ordinary way--geographically, ethnically--but wants to teach you that we all come from the same place. Say, “We come from the light, the place where the light came from in the beginning.”
So, the “Kingdom of God” is not to be looked for at the end of time, but by going back to our origin, the beginning of being, which can be experienced here and now, as a kind of ongoing experience of being. The Gospel of Thomas talks about the Kingdom of God in the present.
The good news of the Gospel of Thomas is that Jesus is the manifestation of the divine light of the world (and so is each of us, although we may have to seek for it). “There is light within a person of light, but if it’s not illuminated, everything is dark.” This suggests that if you come to know who you are you can come to recognize that you come from that divine source, you can recognize that you and Jesus are very much alike, in fact are twins. “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” What we have to bring forth is a manifestation of that divine light which is within us, obscured.
When it comes to the question of where you find the light, the Gospels of John and of Thomas come to different meanings. If we look at them side by side we can listen in on a contentious conversation, an argument, between followers of Jesus at the end of the 1st century, about who Jesus is and how you find out about him.
The Gospel of John: “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not comprehended it. The light came into the world and created the world, but the world did not receive it. The light came to its own people and was rejected.” So John agrees that there was always light in the world, but it never penetrated into the world, until it became flesh, became an actual human being in Jesus, when we saw the glory of God shining, the glory of the only begotten of the Father. John describes Jesus as God’s only son, the single born. Thomas, teaching that we are all children of God, is saying something different. John is saying that you can’t become a child of God in any way like the utterly unique Jesus.
John’s gospel is full of “I Am” sayings, and doesn’t have a Sermon on the Mount or parable of the Prodigal Son. Jesus is saying, in John, that he is what we need, the divine source. One is supposed to believe that Jesus is God manifest, in person, and that you and I are nothing like that. But according to Thomas, Jesus says, ‘I come from the light, and you come from the light too.’
According to John, Jesus says to believe something very specific, that Jesus is the only manifestation of God, the only begotten Son, and that if you believe in Jesus you will have life in his name. Thomas only appears as a name on a list in Matthew, Mark and Luke, but John caricatures him, turning him into “doubting Thomas,” a character who has no faith. In John, Jesus says to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” Also, in John, Jesus comes back from the dead specifically to rebuke Thomas for his lack of faith. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus came back from death and gave his power to the 11 disciples. In John, he tells the 11 that they are his disciples, he breathes upon them, and gives them his authority to remit sins, but also says that Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus returns. When the disciples told Thomas they saw the Lord, he said he didn’t believe it. This is a caricature of the way of seeking God advocated in the Gospel of Thomas, a kind of attack by the author of the Gospel of John on the Gospel of Thomas. John would say that what the followers of Thomas’ way fail to do is believe. This is a caricature of the “seek and find for yourself” teaching of Thomas. In John, Thomas ultimately recognizes that Jesus is not like us, is utterly unique, and Thomas converts to John’s point of view and articulates John’s faith: “Now I understand who you are, you are my Lord and my God.” At that point, Jesus says, “Thomas, don’t be faithless, believe, and blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” So, belief in the uniqueness of Jesus as God’s only begotten Son is the way of the Gospel of John, and not seeking for yourself. The author of the Gospel of Thomas says that Jesus is a manifestation of the divine light, but so are all of us, and we must come to recognize ourselves on a spiritual level. When we come to know ourselves, we will know ourselves as children of the living God, on the path of seeking inner knowing, gnosis, the path of seeking the living God and the inner self.
From the 2nd to 4th centuries, the Christological controversies, the arguments about the nature of Jesus, were argued, between the types of teaching described in the Gospels of John and of Thomas. Jesus, who is he? God from God, light from light, begotten not created, etc., of one being with the Father? This became a basis of the orthodox type of teaching. The inclusion of the Gospel of John is a huge key to how Christian teaching of the nature of Jesus developed, as Irineus thought they should be read, through the lens of John’s gospel.
(There was a Question and Answer exchange in which I didn’t record which was the question, or statement, and which the answer, or response. Because it raises an interesting point, I’ve included it, but don’t know which was Q. and which A.): The Gospel of Thomas and other gnostic Gospels contain allegedly secret teaching, whereas the four accepted Gospels are narratives and contain public teachings. Christians in the 2nd century were not reading one or the other, they were reading both, and seeing them as expressing different levels. Much of this literature comes out of a kind of monastic path. Once you’ve gotten the faith level and lived with that and gotten what you can from that, then you can move to the other (e.g. Thomas) level. Even John doesn’t have to be read in such a narrow way, it can be read “inclusively.”
Question: What would the implication be if the Gospel of Thomas had prevailed?
Answer: The Gospels were meant to be read together, not singly, but probably there wasn’t the basis for an organization of communities in the Gospel of Thomas as there was in the accepted Gospels. Rabbis taught in one way publicly and in another privately, and Jesus probably did too, and these different gospels probably reflect that.
Question: Could the Christian community look at the more open attitude in Thomas and see other religious teachings as being more valid than they are regarded as being at this time? Answer: Yes...if everyone has access to the divine source because everyone is created in that image, it opens up the possibility of seeing other ways, whereas John talks about the children of light and the children of darkness, you are divided into saved and judged from the beginning. Thomas has a much more universal sense.
V. Discussion Panel
(Robert Ornstein read questions from the audience to the speakers as a panel.)
Ornstein: Another Gospel appeared, or at least surfaced, Thursday. I’ll ask Marvin Meyer about the story about the coming to fruition of the Gospel of Judas, which was released Thursday, and in which our three speakers were major participants, and then ask our other speakers to add what they think the Gospel of Judas adds to our knowledge.
Meyer: Publication of the appearance of the availability of a new Christian Gospel from the early church is a momentous occasion...a part of our heritage that was lost up until this point has been found again. Irineus told us it was despicable, awful and dangerous, even though he hadn’t seen it. If the text was lost once, it was almost lost again, because of the avarice and ineptitude of modern people. The Coptic translation was discovered in Egypt in the 1970s, passed from hand to hand in sordid and unpleasant details, eventually made its way to Europe and put on the market--not necessarily legally. The supposed owner asked a very high price...there was no buyer. The codex, the book that contained the Gospel of Judas and 3 other texts (2 from Nag Hammadi library and one called the Book of the Stranger, where Jesus is the Stranger), was put away in a safe deposit box for 16 years in Long island, not a climatized box, which was not good for the papyrus.
(Note: My typed notes end here. Notes that follow are based on longhand recording, which is much slower. There’s a break in the content because I put the laptop away and got out my notebook, so we are beginning somewhere else below, probably in response to another question. Discussion was free-ranging, and questions were often summarized from several along the same lines.)
Ehrman: Jesus was killed because he preached that the Roman society would be superseded by the Kingdom of God. Even though he wasn’t preaching the overthrow of the Roman empire, he didn’t think it would be there for very long.
Meyer: Schweitzer said that when you look for the historical Jesus it’s like looking into a well--what you see is a reflection of yourself.
Meyer: The “Son of Man,” or “Child of Humanity,” is a Semitic way of referring to a representative. So, if Jesus spoke of the “Son of Man” or “Child of Humanity” as not having a place to lay his head, he was speaking in this way, as a Jewish wisdom teacher. (Meyer is disagreeing with Ehrman here; he doesn’t see Jesus as an apocalyptic teacher.)
Question: Can religion be studied scientifically?
Meyer: As a part of culture, social science study of religion has a long history. Brain studies are being done now. But it’s not likely that a scientific approach could ever prove or disprove the tenets of religion.
Pagels: As long as we dream in associative and emotive images, those are the images of religion.
Ornstein: Harris’ book tries to separate religion from spirituality--not a very good book, but an interesting idea, that the structures of religion obstruct spirituality. Reading Dennett on religion is a little bit like reading Darwin on a cell phone. There are evangelical Darwinists like evangelical religionists.
Question (a group of connected questions asked together): Will people move to a more individual path? Does your study of Thomas have personal implications? How have your studies influenced your personal lives? (“in three words or less”--Ornstein, after reading this group of questions).
Ehrman: I moved toward agnosticism due to my issues over (humanity’s) pain and suffering. I started out as a fundamentalist who had all the answers. Coming to understand the wide diversity of early Christianity came as a shock. As far back as you can trace it, there are wide divergencies among Christian thinkers. Paul’s letters (names specific ones) are to Christians, criticizing them. Reading all this led me to be interested in early Christian history, and you realize that these are not God-given truths, these are cultural ideas. Elaine (Pagels, Ehrman is referring to her earlier comment) pointed out that there’s a symbiosis between religion and cultural, theological, and political points of view. This caused a serious re-thinking of of my beliefs. All religion reflects cultural contexts.
Meyer: I don’t see an evolutionary scheme (in religion). Mircea Eliades’ “From the Primitive to Zen” posits a developmental scheme. Having spent time in Japan and studied Zen, I don’t see any simple evolutionary scheme tied to religion. But there is something that becomes very personal about our values. One thing that makes me think about the problems of organized religion is the unholy alliance between politics and religion, which goes back (at least as far as to) Constantine. All kinds of foibles typical of social, economic and political organizations came to fruition in the Christian church, as they do in all organizations. Finding God in the work of the baker in the shop or the farmer in the field is a very different way of looking at politics. The historical Jesus seems to have had more questions than answers. He had questions and told stories, and left his stories kind of ambiguous. Among these various people, who is it who loves his neighbor? The questions can be a lot better than the answers. I’ve learned to enjoy those questions immensely.
Pagels: I was brought up in a scientific family thinking that religion was passe, but had to find a spiritual dimension in my life. This God of the Christians cared about people, unlike gods of Greece and Rome, and that matters to me. My work brings me to the conviction that all religion involves social and political dimensions. I was asking, in my recent work, ‘What is it I love in Christian tradition, and what can’t I love?’ I love the (emphasis) on how you treat others, and the music and (worship?) in the congregation. I can’t love the set of doctrines that aren’t about how you live or treat one another. The doctrine seemed irrelevant, but the community of people and how they treat each other is important. I do participate in a church, but the doctrine is not important.
Ornstein (summarizing): Through the speakers’ works and talks we can see that there isn’t a monolithic or (even) a few views of Christianity, but in early Christianity, especially if you go through Dr. Ehrman’s work, the diversity is quite amazing, and a lot of ideas are quite relevant to people’s lives as they are living them today, reminiscent of Huxley’s ideas of a “Perennial Philosophy,” a concordance of spiritual views. Dr. Ehrman presented a striking view of the relationship between apocalyptic views and social action. Why save the environment, try to prevent mass deaths, when all those heathens are going to die anyway? The environmental movement was criticized by Christians for wanting smaller cars which would encourage families to have fewer children who could be saved after the Rapture. This was presented to the U.S. Congress. As we read the Gospels, there’s a ‘Jesus loves me’ effect--Mary, John, or whomever being the star--that’s some of the message. There’s a lot of similarities between esoteric traditions and early Nag Hamadi Gospels, (which are) closer to the wisdom traditions of the East and West than to the official Christian cannon.
