I’VE ALWAYS ENJOYED A GOOD, reasoned debate on a controversial issue. In high school I was on the debate team and loved it. My debate colleagues and I were good at it already as sixteen-year-olds, able to take either side of a hot topic and argue for it, then turn around and argue the opposing side in the next debate. I still do public debates around the country today, almost always with evangelical Christian scholars, on topics of importance, especially to evangelical Christians. “Can Historians Prove That Jesus Was Raised from the Dead?” (I always argue that, no, no one can prove it.) “Are the Gospel Accounts of Jesus Reliable?” (No, not completely.) “Does the Bible Provide an Adequate Answer to Why There Is Suffering?” (No, not really.) And so on.

I also think debates can be useful pedagogically in the classroom; they help undergraduate students learn how to mount arguments, assess evidence, and see the strengths of a position they personally reject. So I have my students debate controversial topics in my course on the New Testament. “Did Paul and Jesus Represent Fundamentally Different Religions?” “Were the Apostle Paul’s Views of Women Oppressive?” “Does the New Testament Condemn Modern Practices of Homosexuality?”

Sometimes in setting up these debates I find out in advance which side students want to take (affirmative or negative) and then assign them to the opposite side, forcing them to argue for a position they personally reject. It’s a great exercise. Politicians should try it sometime, to see that their opponents may actually have something important and persuasive to say.

In my many years of formal debate and in my many more years of informal discussion, I’ve come to realize something very significant. We tend to get in the hottest arguments about topics that we really care about and with people we are closest to. Only rarely do we get intense and bothered about something that doesn’t matter to us. And our most heated arguments are almost always with friends and loved ones rather than absolute strangers.

Debates Among Early Christians

THE SAME WAS TRUE with the arguments carried out by the early Christians. As we saw in the previous chapter, Christians were in conflict with Jews and pagans over the validity of their religion. These debates were sometimes heated. They were, after all, about issues that mattered deeply to Christians. But the hottest early Christian debates were with other Christians, as they argued over the right things to believe and the right ways to live. These internal Christian debates were often filled with vitriol and hatred. Christians called one another nasty names, said ugly things about one another, and pulled out all stops to make their Christian opponents look reprehensible and stupid, denying, in many instances, that the opponents even had the right to call themselves Christian. Anyone perceived as a false teacher was subject to verbal lashing; outsiders to the faith—pagans and Jews—were treated with kid gloves by comparison.

Christian arguments with false teachers in their midst happened a lot, as far back as we have records. Our earliest Christian author was Paul, and in virtually every one of his letters it is clear that he had opponents on all sides. Many Christian readers over the years have failed to see the significance of Paul’s constant attacks on false teachers. One thing that these attacks show, beyond dispute, is that virtually everywhere Paul went, even within his own churches, he and his views were under steady assault by Christians who thought and believed differently. It is easy to miss this rather obvious historical fact, because the writings of Paul’s opponents have not survived the ravages of time, whereas his writings became part of the New Testament. But if we could transport ourselves back to the 50s CE, we would find that everywhere Paul went, he confronted Christian teachers who thought he preached a false gospel. This was true even in the churches that he himself founded. And these opponents were not the same in every place; different locations produced different opponents, with different views.

Just as key examples, in the churches of Galatia, Paul’s Christian opponents claimed that he had perverted the true gospel message of Jesus and his apostles when he insisted that Gentiles did not have to be circumcised and become Jewish to be followers of Jesus. Nonsense, replied his opponents. Jesus was a Jew, his followers were Jews, he taught the Jewish law, he was the Jewish messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people—following Jesus of course meant being Jewish. This view lost out in the ensuing debates, but it certainly had extensive and avid supporters in its day.

In the church of Corinth Paul’s opponents insisted that he was a weak and pathetic speaker who showed no evidence of being empowered by God. They, on the other hand, had superior divine gifts demonstrating the supremacy of their message that true believers had already been raised with Christ to experience the power and joy of the heavenly existence in the here and now.

In the city of Rome Paul was maligned by Christian leaders who claimed he was not a true apostle. These Christians attacked Paul both for thinking that Gentiles were superior to Jews in the church and for advocating a gospel that led to an immoral lifestyle.

And so it goes—at every turn Paul had opponents. We should not write these opponents off as fringe minority groups of no importance. They were everywhere, and Paul saw them as dangerous. His views eventually won out, but in his own day the differences of opinion were widespread and highly threatening. And Paul was not the only apostle under fire. In every early Christian community believers attacked other believers for their false beliefs.

This was a problem for a religion that claimed to stand for “the” truth. If the followers of Jesus represented the single, unified truth of God, why was it that the Christian church was not single and unified? In fact, it was anything but that, not just in the days of Paul, but throughout the entire first four centuries. Just in the second and third centuries, for example, we know of powerful and influential Christian teachers like Marcion who maintained that there is not just one God, but two Gods. Some Gnostics said there were 30 divine beings, or 365. These Christians claimed that they were right, and that everyone else was wrong. Had one of these other groups won the debates, the world would be a very different place today.

In the second and third centuries some Christians said that Jesus was the most righteous man who had ever lived and was chosen by God to be his messiah. But he was not at all divine. A human being can’t be divine. Other Christians, again like Marcion, insisted that Christ was completely divine and not at all human. Still other Christians, including the Gnostics whom I’ve already mentioned, maintained that Jesus Christ was two beings: a man Jesus and a divine Christ who came into Jesus to empower him for his ministry and who then left him prior to his death, since the Christ cannot suffer. Yet other Christians said that Jesus was God the Father himself come to earth.

At this same time there were Christians who denied that God had created the world. Or had called Israel to be his people. Or had authored the Jewish Scriptures. There were other Christians who insisted that the Jewish Scriptures were sacred, but were not to be interpreted literally. Yet other Christians said that they had to be interpreted literally and followed literally, as do some even today.

Early Christians were nothing if not radically diverse. Yet all of these Christian groups claimed not only to be right, but also to be uniquely right—their view, and their view alone, represented the one and only divine truth. As a corollary, they each claimed that their view of the truth was the view taught by Jesus himself and through him to the apostles. And all of these groups had books to prove it, books allegedly written by apostles that supported their points of view.

Christians today may wonder why these various groups didn’t simply read their New Testaments to see that their views were wrong. The answer, of course, is that there was no New Testament. The New Testament emerged out of these conflicts, as one of the Christian groups won the arguments and decided which books would be included in Scripture. Other books representing other points of view and also attributed to the apostles of Jesus were not only left out of Scripture; they were destroyed and forgotten. As a result, today, when we think of early Christianity, we tend to think of it only as it has come down to us in the writings of the victorious party. Only slowly, in modern times, have ancient books come to light that support alternative views, as they have turned up in archaeological digs and by pure serendipity, for example, in the sands of Egypt.

What were Christian teachers to do when they were convinced that their particular understanding of Jesus and of the faith was true, but they didn’t have any apostolic writings to back it up? One thing they sometimes did—or, arguably, often did—was to invent apostolic writings. Nothing generated more literary forgeries in the names of the apostles than the internal conflicts among competing Christian groups. These forgeries established apostolic authority for a group’s own views and attacked the views of other groups. Many of the forgeries that we have already considered do so at great length, and there are others that are yet to be considered here.

Forgeries Directed Against Unknown Opponents

WHEN READING EARLY CHRISTIAN attacks on false teachers, it is often difficult to know what exactly the opponents believed. That is because in most instances we don’t have any of the opponents’ own writings, and so we have to reconstruct their views from what their enemies say about them. That often doesn’t give one much to go on. Try to imagine reconstructing one presidential candidate’s (real) views from what the other candidate says in order to attack him. This kind of reconstruction is much easier to do today, when we have mass media and extensive reporting on both sides of any issue, so that it is harder to flat-out lie about the other person’s view. Politicians today, as a rule, have to be relatively sneaky. In the ancient world there was virtually nothing to stop flagrant distortion and misrepresentation. How would anyone know, without a newspaper or magazine article stating the opponents’ real views?

In other instances the arguments against opponents are made for readers who have the opponents right there among them, so that both the writer and the readers know perfectly well what the opponents’ views are. As a consequence, the writer feels no need to spell them out. That is fine for ancient readers who know what the author is talking about. But for those of us living two thousand years later it can be very frustrating. We get only hints at the character of the false teaching and have to do our best to stitch it together from what little we’re told.

In yet other instances an author may attack false views that he himself has made up simply as a foil for his own thoughts. This is especially the case with forged writings in which the author pretends to be living in an earlier age. The false teachings attacked are not necessarily views that anyone held. They are simply an alternative perspective that the author maligns in order to set out the “truth” of his point of view.

We have to contend with all such cases when dealing with the forged writings of early Christianity, including those of the New Testament. Several writings attack false teachings, but it is well nigh impossible to say what the opponents actually believed, if in fact they really existed at all.

COLOSSIANS

This is the case with the letter to the Colossians, written in Paul’s name but almost certainly pseudonymous, as we saw in Chapter 3. The author, whoever he was, urges his readers not to be led astray by false teaching: “See that no one makes you prey through philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the cosmos and not according to Christ” (2:8). He goes on to charge his readers with what they should and should not believe and with what religious practices they should and should not engage in. But whom is he arguing against?

This is a classic case of scholars having almost no way to know. Not that that has stopped anyone from trying. One scholar writing in 1973 pointed out that there were forty-four different scholarly opinions about what the false teachers under attack stood for.¹ In a five-year stretch in the early 1990s there were four major books written on the subject by expert scholars; they each represented a different view.² My view is that we’ll never know for sure.

What we can say is that the author portrays these false teachers, whether they really existed or not, as urging their Christian readers in the worship of angels, basing their views on divine visions they had had. They also allegedly urged their followers to lead an ascetic lifestyle, avoiding certain foods and drinks, and observing, probably, Jewish Sabbaths and festivals (thus 2:16–18, 21–23). The author, claiming to be Paul, is opposed to all this. He thinks Christ alone is to be worshiped, for in Christ (not in angels) can be found the complete embodiment of the divine. Moreover, those who are “in Christ” have already experienced the benefits of the resurrection; there is no need for them to engage in ascetic practices.

Why would an author claim to be Paul in order to attack these unknown opponents? Evidently because doing so allowed the author to malign people he disagreed with while setting out his own point of view, even though his view is, in fact, different from Paul’s, as we saw in Chapter 3.

JUDE

Consider next the New Testament book of Jude. This short book is even more obviously directed against false teachers in the Christian community. After greeting his readers, the author explains the reason for his letter:

Here the opponents are described in rather nasty terms, but the terms get nastier as you progress through the letter. One point worth emphasizing is that even though these opponents have come into the Christian community (as members), they deny Christ. This should not be taken to mean that they deny being Christian. Quite the contrary, they are portrayed as Christian teachers. By saying that they deny Christ the author is claiming that they aren’t really Christians, because what they teach is false. It is not too hard to imagine that they would say the same thing about him. But his writing became Scripture. Their writings, if they ever existed, were forever lost.

In any event, throughout this book the author has nothing good to say about the opponents. They defile the flesh (whatever that means), reject authority, and revile the holy angels. They are irrational animals, they carouse together, and they are “waterless clouds” and “fruitless trees, twice dead, uprooted.” They are ungodly and do ungodly deeds; they are “grumblers, fault-finders, following their own passions, who boast with loud mouths” (vv. 8–16).

Here again it is hard to say if the author is attacking a real, historical group. He certainly is filled with vitriol for his enemies, but it is impossible to put together a coherent picture of what these people actually taught, based on the rapid-fire name-calling that the author engages in. Possibly the original readers of the book knew exactly whom he was referring to and what they taught. Or possibly the author is simply using an imaginary set of enemies to set up a foil for his own teaching about the true nature of Christian faith, which was “once and for all handed over to the saints” (v. 3). In either event, in his attempt to attack falsehood, the author himself has apparently committed deception. He claims to be Jude (v. 1), and by this claim he seems to be saying that he is the brother of Jesus.

Five persons are named Jude (or Judas—same Greek word) in the New Testament, the most infamous of whom, of course, is Judas Iscariot. One of the others is Jude, the son of Mary and Joseph the carpenter, one of the four brothers of Jesus mentioned in Mark 6:4. The author of this short letter is almost certainly claiming to be that particular Jude, because he identifies himself as “Jude, the brother of James.” Since most ancient people did not have last names, an author with a common name would typically identify himself (so that you would know which Jude he was) by mentioning a known relative, almost always his father. But here the author names not his father, but his brother, James. This must mean that James is the member of the family who is particularly well known.

And what James in the early church was especially well known? The most famous James was the head of the first church, the church in Jerusalem. This James was the brother of Jesus, mentioned throughout the New Testament, for example, by the apostle Paul on several occasions (see Gal. 1:19). If this Jude is identifying himself as the brother of that James, then he is, by implication, obviously the brother of Jesus.

But it is almost certain that the historical Jude did not write this book. Its author is living during a later period in the history of the church, when the churches are already well established, and when false teachers have infiltrated them and need to be rooted out. In fact, the author speaks of “remembering the predictions of the apostles” (v. 17) as if they, the apostles, lived a long time before. In contrast to them, he is living in “the last days” that they predicted (v. 18). This is someone living after the apostolic age.

There is another reason for being relatively certain that Jude did not write the book (referred to earlier, in Chapter 2). Like the lower-class Galilean peasant Peter, the lower-class Galilean peasant Jude could almost certainly not write. Let alone write in Greek. Let alone compose a rhetorically effective letter evidencing detailed knowledge of ancient Jewish texts in Greek. This is an author claiming to be Jude in order to get Christians to read his book and to stand opposed to false teachers who hold a different view of the faith.

Forgeries in Opposition to Paul

PAUL WAS A LIGHTNING ROD for controversy not only during his own lifetime, but also afterward. Some Christians saw him as the greatest authority of the early church, whose vision of Christ on the road to Damascus authorized him to proclaim the true understanding of the gospel. Others saw him as an outsider to the apostolic band, an interloper who transformed the original message of Jesus and his apostles into a different religion far removed from the truth.

We have already seen that supporters of Paul forged letters in his name. These pseudonymous authors obviously felt that Paul’s authority could prove persuasive in the context of the various controversies and struggles the Christian community was encountering. So we have a range of Pauline writings that he did not in fact write: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, 3 Corinthians, letters to Seneca, and no doubt numerous other letters that have not survived from the early church.

But Paul’s detractors also produced forgeries. In these cases, the pseudonymous writings countered Paul’s teachings, or at least teachings that were thought to be Paul’s teachings, whether they actually represented the views of the historical Paul or not. These forgeries were not, of course, written in Paul’s name, but in the names of other authorities of high repute, who cast aspersions either directly or indirectly on the so-called apostle to the Gentiles.

THE NONCANONICAL EPISTLE OF PETER

One of these we have already considered in Chapter 2, the Epistle of Peter, which appears as a kind of introduction to the Pseudo-Clementine Writings. This letter presupposes what was widely assumed in the ancient church and is still assumed by many scholars and laypeople today: Peter and Paul did not see eye to eye on the true gospel message.

The historical Paul himself indicates in his authentic writings that he and Peter were sometimes at odds. This is nowhere clearer than in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where he indicates that Peter chose not to share meals with Gentile (formerly pagan) Christians in the city of Antioch when Jewish Christians arrived in town (see 2:11–14). Presumably Peter thought these visitors would be offended by his decision not to keep kosher. Peter’s withdrawal from Gentiles (to keep kosher) may have been simply an attempt not to make waves among Jewish believers who thought it was important for Jews to maintain their Jewish identity even after becoming followers of Jesus. For Paul, on the other hand, Peter’s withdrawal was an affront to the gospel. This gospel, in his view, proclaimed that Jew and Gentile were equal before God in Christ and that there was no need for followers of Jesus to follow the law, including kosher food laws.

Paul confronted Peter in public and called him a hypocrite for eating with the Gentiles when no Jewish brothers were present, but refusing to do so when they arrived. It is very unfortunate indeed that we don’t know how Peter replied or who, in the general opinion, got the better of the argument. All we know is Paul’s side, as he reports it in the letter to the Galatians. But it is clear that he and Peter were sometimes at odds, and it is not at all clear that they ever reconciled over the issue.

This tension between Peter and Paul over the keeping of the law, as we have seen, is very much at issue in the noncanonical Epistle of Peter, where the author, claiming to be Peter, but actually writing long after his death, attacks a person whom he calls his “enemy.” This enemy has preached a “lawless gospel to the Gentiles,” that is, a gospel that says one is made right with God apart from the law. This personal enemy of Peter has falsely claimed that he, Peter, agrees with his false understanding of the faith. “Peter,” however, does not agree with it and attacks his enemy for claiming that he does.

This, then, is a thinly veiled attack on Paul written by a Jewish Christian who thought that it was proper, and even necessary, for Jews who believed in Jesus to continue observing the Jewish law. Failing to do so meant a breech in true religion. Paul, for this author, is not an apostolic authority. He is a false preacher.

THE PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE WRITINGS

A similar teaching is found in the Pseudo-Clementine Writings themselves.³ If you will recall, these are a set of long narratives allegedly written by Clement, the fourth bishop of Rome (i.e., the pope), in which he describes his travels, his meeting with the apostle Peter, and his conversion to become a follower of Jesus. Most of the books narrate his subsequent adventures while participating with Peter on his missionary journeys. In particular these accounts relate how Peter engaged in conflicts and miracle contests with Simon the Magician, who claimed to be the true representative of God, but who, according to Peter, was a false teacher. In some passages of these books it is clear that Simon is understood to be someone else—Peter’s real-life enemy, the apostle Paul.

Nowhere is this more clear than in several passages in the Pseudo-Clementine Writings known as the Homilies.⁴ In one passage Peter elaborates God’s way of dealing with the world from the very beginning. Peter points out that there have often been pairs of people who appear in sacred history. The first to appear is always the inferior of the two. So, for example, the first children born to Adam and Eve were the wicked Cain (first) and the righteous Abel (second). So too the father of the Jews, Abraham, had two children: the firstborn, Ishmael, who was not to inherit the promises, and then Isaac, who was. Isaac then had two sons, Esau, the profane, and Jacob, the pious. And on and on through history.

This pattern applies to the Christian mission field, argues “Peter.” The first missionary to the Gentiles was “Simon” (i.e., Paul); he was necessarily inferior. The second, the superior, was Peter himself, who claims, “I have come after him [Simon/Paul] and have come in upon him as light upon darkness, as knowledge upon ignorance, as healing upon disease” (2.17). Not a very affirming portrayal of Paul! Peter has followed in Paul’s missionary path, straightening out everything that Paul had gotten wrong.

A second passage is even more condemning. As is well known, Paul was often said to have been commissioned to be an apostle by Christ in the vision he had on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9). Paul was not one of the original followers of Jesus. On the contrary, he started out as a persecutor of the Christian church. But then Christ appeared to him and converted him, telling him to become his missionary to the Gentiles. Paul himself, the historical Paul, took this commissioning with the utmost seriousness and claimed in books such as Galatians that, since he received his gospel message directly from Jesus, he was beholden to no one. Anyone who preached a message contrary to his message was advocating falsehood rather than truth (Gal. 1:6–9). He, Paul, had the truth from Christ himself. And among other things, this truth was that Gentiles were not to adopt the Jewish law in order to find salvation in Christ (thus Gal. 2:15–16).

The author of the Pseudo-Clementines heartily disagrees and portrays Peter himself as mocking Paul for his claims to have direct access to the teachings of Jesus, based on a single brief vision. In Homily 17 Peter says to “Simon” (i.e., Paul):

Visions cannot be trusted, because you have no way of knowing, really, what you are seeing. So if Paul’s authority is rooted exclusively in a vision, it is no authority at all.

Peter continues with an argument that would seem hard to refute:

Paul may have had a brief vision of Jesus. But Peter was with him for months—a year!—not asleep and dreaming, but awake, listening to his every word. And Jesus himself declared that it was Peter, not Paul, who was the “Rock” on whom the church would be built. Paul is a late interloper whose authority rests on entirely dubious grounds. It is the teachings of Peter that are to be followed, not those of Paul.

Whether or not this is the view of the historical Peter is something we will probably never know. But it is certainly the view of Peter set forth in the forged writings known as the Pseudo-Clementines.

JAMES

In the New Testament itself we find a book that appears to attack Paul’s teachings, or at least a later misinterpretation of Paul’s teachings. This is a letter that claims to be written by someone named James. In the early church it was widely assumed that this James was the brother of Jesus.

James was known throughout the history of the early church to have been firmly committed to his Jewish roots and heritage, even as a follower of Jesus.⁵ According to the New Testament he was not a disciple of Jesus during his lifetime (see John 7:5), but he was one of the first to see the resurrected Jesus after his death (1 Cor. 15:7), and because of that, presumably, he came to believe in him. No doubt it was his filial connection that elevated him to a position of authority in the church.

The apostle Paul, who personally knew James (Gal. 1:19), indicates that he was committed to keeping the Jewish law and appears to have insisted that the other Jewish followers of Jesus do so as well (2:12). He was well known for his great piety; one early source indicates that he prayed so often and at such length that his knees became as calloused as a camel’s. The best historical records indicate that he died around 62 CE, after heading the Jerusalem church for thirty years.

James was a very common name among Jews in first-century Palestine, and among Christians as well. A number of people named James are in the New Testament. Matthew 10:3–4 indicates that two of Jesus’s twelve disciples had the name. To differentiate the two Jameses, normally they are given additional identity markers, such as “James the son of Zebedee” or “James the son of Alphaeus.” The author of the book of James, however, does not identify himself further, suggesting he expected his readers to know which James he was. There seems to be little doubt, then, that he is claiming to be the most famous James of all, Jesus’s brother. This view is corroborated by the fact that he writes his letter to the “twelve tribes in the Dispersion,” a reference to the twelve tribes of Israel who are scattered throughout the Roman world. James, the chief Jewish Christian, is writing to the dispersed Jewish Christians.

The book contains a number of ethical admonitions that urge readers to live in ways appropriate for the followers of Jesus. They are to have faith and not to doubt; to endure trials, be slow to anger, watch their tongues, control their desires and not to show partiality, be jealous or ambitious, seek wealth, or show favoritism to the wealthy, and so on. Many of these admonitions seem to reflect the teachings of Jesus himself, for example, from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7).

The author is particularly concerned with one issue, however, an issue that reflects a bone of contention with other Christians. Some Christians are evidently saying that to be right with God, all you need is faith; for them, doing “good works” is irrelevant to salvation, so long as you believe. James thinks this is precisely wrong, that if you do not do good deeds, then you obviously don’t have faith:

The author goes on to argue that having faith apart from works cannot bring salvation and in fact is worthless. This is shown above all by the example of Abraham, father of the Jews, who was saved by what he did, not just by what he believed:

Here, then, is a sharp invective against anyone who maintains that it is faith alone that can put a person into a right standing before God (in James’s words, that can “justify” a person). His evidence is Abraham, and the Scripture he quotes in support is Genesis 15:6: “And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

One of the reasons this passage is significant is that it sounds almost like a parody of something that Paul himself wrote, earlier, in his letter to the Galatians, when he was trying to convince his Gentile readers that they did not have to do the works of the law in order to be justified (be made right with God), but that faith in Christ alone was all that was needed. What is most striking is that Paul tries to demonstrate his case by referring specifically to Abraham and by quoting Genesis 15:6. Here is what Paul writes:

For centuries scholars of the New Testament have maintained that the book of James is responding to the teaching of Galatians. Paul taught that it was faith in Christ that put people into a right relationship with God, independently of whether or not they did the works of the law. James insisted that works were needed, that faith alone could not bring justification. The two authors use the same language (“justify,” “faith,” “works”), they appeal to the same Old Testament figure, Abraham, and they both cite the same verse, Genesis 15:6. Since Martin Luther at the beginning of the Reformation, some interpreters have insisted that James is contradicting Paul. Luther’s conclusion was that James had gotten it precisely wrong.

More recent scholars, however, have called this reading of James into question. In large measure that is because, even though the letter uses the same terms as Paul, James demonstrably means something different by these terms. When Paul uses the term “faith,” as we saw in an earlier context, he means something relational by it; faith in Christ means trusting that Christ’s death and resurrection can restore a person to a right standing before God. This, for Paul, comes “apart from the works of the law,” meaning that one does not have to do the works prescribed by the Jewish law in order to trust Christ. One does not need to observe the Sabbath, keep kosher food laws, be circumcised if male, and so on.

James means something different, however, by both “faith” and “works.” For him, faith does not have the relational meaning of “trusting someone.” It refers to intellectual assent to a proposition: “Even the demons believe [God is one], and they shudder” (2:19). In other words, even demons know that there is only one real God, but it doesn’t do them any good. This decidedly does not mean that the demons trust God; they simply have the intellectual knowledge of his existence. Faith—intellectual assent to the propositions of the Christian religion—will not save anyone, according to James. But would Paul disagree with that? Probably not.

Even more striking, when James speaks of “works,” he is not referring to actions required by the Jewish law: Sabbath observance, kosher food requirements, and so on. He is clearly talking about good deeds: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked (the two examples he gives), and so on. For James, an intellectual assent to Christianity that does not manifest itself in how one lives is of no use. It can’t save a soul.

And so the book of James may seem to be contradicting Paul, but it is not really contradicting him. What is one to make of that? Actually it is not too difficult to see what happened historically. In Chapter 3 we saw that there were later authors, such as the author of Ephesians, who claimed to be Paul, but who transformed his teaching that the works of the Jewish law could not bring salvation into a teaching that said “good works” could not save (see Eph. 2:8–9; see also Titus 3:5). For an author like the pseudonymous writer of Ephesians, doing good deeds does not contribute to making a person right with God. James therefore is reacting not to what Paul said but to what later Christians misunderstood Paul as saying.

These later Pauline Christians interpreted Paul’s argument that it was faith, not works, that justified to mean that it doesn’t matter what you do or how you live. It matters only what you believe. Paul’s teaching on “works of the law” was taken to be a general principle about “good deeds.” And Paul’s teaching about “trust in Christ” was altered into a teaching about “what to believe.” For these later Christians, then, what mattered was your belief, not your life. They thought this teaching came from Paul, and so they too appealed to Abraham, the father of all believers, and to Genesis 15:6, which indicated that Abraham was justified by his faith, not his works. James reacted against that by arguing the opposite: you can’t have true faith without it being reflected in how you live your life. “Faith without works is dead.”

This, then, was another controversy over the teachings of Paul as they came to be reinterpreted in his churches after his day. James does not name Paul explicitly, but it is perfectly clear that his teachings are what he has in mind, at least as they were being interpreted in his day. But was he really James, or was he someone else claiming to be James?

There are excellent reasons for thinking that this letter was not written by the brother of Jesus, but was forged in his name. For one thing, the teaching being opposed must have arisen later than the writings of Paul. That is to say, it is a later development of Pauline thinking in a later Pauline community. The teaching is indeed similar to the teaching found in Ephesians, written after Paul’s lifetime in his name. But it goes even farther than Ephesians, since the author of Ephesians would never have said that it didn’t matter how you lived so long as you have faith. Just the opposite in fact! (See Eph. 2:10.) Whoever is writing the book of James is presupposing an even later situation found among Paul’s churches. But since the historical James was probably martyred in 62 CE, two decades or so before Ephesians was written, the book could not very well have been written by him.

Moreover, the one thing we know best about James of Jerusalem is that he was concerned that Jewish followers of Jesus continue to keep the requirements of Jewish law. But this concern is completely and noticeably missing in this letter. This author, claiming to be James, is concerned with people doing “good deeds” he is not at all concerned with keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath and Jewish festivals, or circumcision. His concerns are not those of James of Jerusalem.

The real clincher, though, is one we have seen before in relation to both Peter and Jude. This author has written a very fluent and rhetorically effective composition in Greek. He is intimately familiar with the Greek version of the Old Testament. The historical James, on the other hand, was an Aramaic-speaking peasant from Galilee who almost certainly never learned to read. Or if he did learn to read, it was to read Hebrew. If he ever learned Greek, it would have been as a second language in order to speak it, haltingly no doubt. He never would have gone to school. He never would have become proficient in Greek. He never would have learned how to write, even in his native language, let alone a second tongue. He never would have studied the Greek Old Testament. He never would have taken Greek composition classes. He never would have become skilled in Greek rhetoric.

This book was not written by an illiterate Aramaic-speaking Jew. Whoever wrote it claimed to be James, because that would best accomplish his objective: to stress that followers of Jesus need to manifest their faith in their lives, doing good deeds that show forth their faith, since without works faith is dead.

Forgeries in Support of Paul

JUST AS THERE WERE forgers who wanted to emphasize that Paul stood at odds with the Jerusalem disciples Peter and James and that Paul, therefore, misinterpreted the Christian message, there were others who took Paul’s side and wanted to argue that he was in perfect harmony with the teachings of Peter and James, and that all three, therefore, were on the side of truth. This is at least one of the overarching points of two of the books we already considered in Chapter 2, 1 and 2 Peter, as well as a book that scholars have as a rule been loath to label a forgery, even though that is what it appears to be—the New Testament book of Acts.

1 PETER

We have seen a number of reasons for thinking that, whoever wrote 1 Peter, it was not actually Peter. There are, however, additional reasons, two of which relate to my claim, here, that the book was written to show that Peter and Paul were completely simpatico. The first has to do with the audience of the letter. The one thing we know about the historical Peter’s missionary activities is that he went to the Jews in order to try to convert them to believe in Christ. When Paul met with the “Jerusalem apostles” (Peter, James, and John), they agreed that just as Peter was in charge of the mission to the Jews, Paul would go to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:6–9). What is striking about 1 Peter is that it is written to Gentiles, not Jews (2:10; 4:3–4). But that’s Paul’s area, not Peter’s. Moreover, the geographical destination of the letter is Paul’s. The letter is directed to Christians living in five regions of Asia Minor, a place where Paul had started churches. Nothing connects the historical Peter with these places.

These features of the letter seem less odd when seen in the total context of what the letter is trying to accomplish. Not only is it providing comfort to those who are suffering for their faith; in doing so it is trying to make Peter sound like Paul, the missionary to the Gentiles in Asia Minor. Why would it want to do that? Surely it is for reasons we have seen: there were other Christians who maintained, even in the churches of Asia Minor, that Peter and Paul were at each other’s throats and represented different understandings of the gospel. Not for the author of 1 Peter. He writes a letter in the name of Peter that sounds very much like a letter of Paul.

The two people that the pseudonymous author names in the letter, Silvanus and Mark (5:12–13), are otherwise known as companions of Paul (see, e.g., 1 Thess. 1:1; Philem. 24). The use of Scripture in the letter is very similar to the way Paul uses Scripture; Hosea 2:25 is quoted in 2:10, for example, to show that Gentiles are now the people of God, just as Paul uses the same verse in Romans 9:25. The moral exhortations of the letter sound like Paul’s; for example, Christians are to be “subject to every human institution,” as in Romans 13:1–7. And most important, the theology espoused in the letter is the theology of Paul. Just as isolated examples, which could be multiplied many times over: it is faith that leads to salvation (1:9); the end of all things is at hand (4:7); and the death of Christ brings salvation from sins (2:24; 3:18). These may all sound like things every Christian could well say. But when you look at the actual wording of the passages, you would be hard pressed at times to say that this isn’t straight from Paul: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (2:24); “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (3:18).

It is not convincing to mount a counterargument by saying this letter contains some differences from Paul’s own letters as well. One can argue that about all of Paul’s undisputed letters; each one has distinctive things to say. The point is that this letter forged in the name of Peter appears to go out of its way to embrace views attested otherwise for Paul. Here we have a forger who wants to insist that the two great apostles of the church were completely on the same page in their understanding of the gospel, in the face of other Christians who argued that they were at odds with one another.

2 PETER

Something similar can be said of 2 Peter. In this case the author goes even farther out of his way to insist that he is Peter, as he not only names himself “Simeon Peter” in 1:1, but stresses that he was personally present with Jesus on the mount at the transfiguration: “We were eyewitnesses of his majesty…for we were with him on the holy mountain” (2:16–19). This really is Peter! And he really likes Paul! In fact, he more than likes Paul—he thinks Paul’s letters are Scripture.

As we have seen, 2 Peter stresses that even though a long time has passed since Jesus declared that the end of all things would be “soon,” everything is in fact going according to plan. Soon in God’s calendar is not the same as soon in ours, for “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day” (2:8). God has in fact put off the time of the end in order to provide more time for more people to be saved: “Consider the patience of our Lord as salvation.” This, claims the author, is taught by “our beloved brother Paul,” who, we are told, “wrote to you according to the wisdom that was given to him, speaking about these thing in all his letters, in which there are matters hard to understand, which the unlearned and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do with the rest of the Scriptures” (3:15–16).

There are several important points here. Paul is Peter’s “beloved brother.” They agree on all essential points. Other Christians have misinterpreted (“twisted”) Paul’s letters. They do this as well with the “other” Scriptures. Among other things, this means that “Peter” considers the letters of Paul to be Scripture. For this author, then, if anyone interprets Paul’s letters to mean that he and Peter disagree, they have flat-out misinterpreted the letters. Paul’s letters speak the truth, and Peter agrees with them.

Except, of course, that the person who wrote this letter was not actually Peter, but someone later claiming to be Peter. One of the ultimate goals of this pseudonymous writer is perfectly clear: he very much wanted his readers to think that the apostle to the Jews and the apostle to the Gentiles had no differences of opinion.

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

The Acts of the Apostles is the earliest surviving account we have of the spread of Christianity in the years immediately after the death of Jesus. It is a historical narrative that tries to explain how Christianity moved geographically from its beginnings in the city of Jerusalem, throughout Judea, into Samaria, and then into other parts of the Roman Empire, until it finally reached the city of Rome itself. But Acts is concerned not only with the geographical spread of the religion, but also with what you might call its “ethnic” spread. The author is particularly interested in the question of how the Jewish religion of Jesus and his followers became a religion adopted by Gentiles, non-Jews. Given the author’s interest in the conversion of former pagans to the new faith, it is no surprise that the ultimate hero of the story is Paul, known in the early church as the apostle to the Gentiles par excellence.

Paul in this narrative does not start out as a follower of Jesus, however. Quite the contrary. As the budding Christian church grows by fits and starts in its early months through the preaching of such empowered apostles as Peter, who is the main character of the book’s first twelve chapters, it also incurs the hatred of Jews who refuse to convert and see the newfound religion as blasphemous and dangerous. Eventually the chief opponent of the new faith is Saul of Tarsus, a highly religious Jew who is authorized to hunt down and imprison anyone who professes faith in Christ.

But then in one of the greatest turn-arounds in early Christian history—or in all of history, some would argue—the great persecutor of the faith becomes its most powerful preacher. En route to persecute Christians in the city of Damascus Paul has a vision of the resurrected Jesus and comes to believe that the faith he had once opposed is true (Acts 9). After meeting with those who were apostles before him—Peter and others—Paul devotes himself as zealously to propagating the new faith as he had once devoted himself to oppressing it. Paul travels throughout the Mediterranean regions of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia (modern Turkey and Greece), visiting major urban areas, preaching the gospel, converting mainly Gentiles, and starting churches.

Early in his missionary work a major point of contention arises among the leaders of the church, however. Don’t the Gentiles who are coming to believe in Jesus need to convert to Judaism, if they are to be followers of the Jewish messiah? Don’t they need to be circumcised and to keep the Jewish law? Some of the Christian leaders think that the answer is yes; others think the answer is no. Peter himself, in this story, firmly thinks no. In no small measure this is because, even before Paul’s missionary journeys, God has revealed to Peter, personally, in a vision, that Gentiles are to be accepted into the faith without becoming Jews (Acts 10–11). Peter in fact is the first to convert a Gentile.

And so when a church conference is called to decide the matter in Acts 15, halfway through the narrative, there are some outside, unnamed spokespersons for the view that Gentile converts should be required to keep the law. But the main insiders—not just Paul, but also Peter and James, head of the Jerusalem church—are completely on the other side and stand shoulder to shoulder in insisting that the salvation of Christ has gone to the Gentiles, who do not have to accept the Jewish law in order to be saved.

Newly authorized by this unified decision, Paul goes back to the mission field and establishes more churches, before running into trouble with the Jewish authorities during a visit to Jerusalem. Most of the final third of the book of Acts deals with Paul’s imprisonment and trials as he attempts to defend himself, insisting that he has not been doing anything contrary to the Jewish law. He, instead, has always supported the law in preaching that Jesus himself is the Jewish messiah who has been raised from the dead (even though he thinks Gentiles are not required to keep the law). Paul eventually appeals to present his case before the Roman emperor, as he is entitled to do as a Roman citizen. The book ends with his journey to Rome and his house arrest there, where he is shown preaching to all who will hear while waiting for his trial.

As should be clear from this summary, one of the overarching themes of Acts is that Peter, the hero of the first third of the book, and Paul, the hero of the rest, were completely aligned in every respect. They agreed on the practical question of whether Gentiles should be required to keep the Jewish law; they agreed on the need and approach to the mission to convert Gentiles; they agreed on every theological issue. To this extent the book of Acts lines up very nicely with the two other books of the New Testament we have already considered, 1 and 2 Peter, and against a number of books from outside the New Testament, such as the Epistle of Peter and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. One could also argue that it stands at odds with what Paul himself had to say in the book of Galatians, where Peter is not treated in a friendly way.

As it turns out, there are many other differences between what the book of Acts says about Paul and what Paul says about himself in his letters. I won’t go into all the gory details here, as they are more fully discussed in other places that are easily accessible.⁶ Just with respect to Galatians, though, I might point out that, whereas Acts is quite clear that Peter realized, even before Paul did, that it was a good and right thing to share meals with Gentiles who did not keep kosher, in Galatians 2 this is precisely what Peter refuses to do when Jewish “brothers” show up in town. One could argue that Paul was right, that Peter was simply being hypocritical. But there is nothing in Galatians to suggest that Peter actually saw it this way or that he thought Paul was right about the matter. The historical Peter may have thought that sharing meals with Gentiles when Jews were around was wrong. If so, then the historical Peter thought differently from the way the Peter of the book of Acts thought.

There are other differences between Acts and Galatians that are even harder to reconcile. Here I’ll mention just two. In Galatians Paul tries to convince his Gentile readers that it would be an enormous mistake if they were to become circumcised and begin following the Jewish law. He wants to insist that his understanding of this matter came directly from God, in the revelation he had of Christ that turned him into a follower. He did not—he emphatically and decidedly did not—get this message from those who were apostles before him, Peter, James, and the others. In fact, he stresses, after the vision of Christ that converted him, he did not even go to Jerusalem to talk with the apostles. He went away into Arabia, then back to Damascus, and did not go to Jerusalem for another three years (1:15–19). This makes the story of Paul’s conversion in the book of Acts very interesting. Here we are told that Paul is blinded by his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus; he then enters the city and regains his sight. And what’s the very first thing he does when he leaves town? He makes a beeline straight to Jerusalem to see the apostles (Acts 9:1–26). Well, which is it? Did he stay away from Jerusalem, as Paul himself says, or did he go there first thing, as Acts says?

Moreover, whom does he see there? Paul insists in Galatians 1:18–19 that in his fifteen-day visit he saw only two people, Peter and James, the brother of Jesus. Paul is emphatic on this point, which he stresses by swearing an oath: “What I am writing to you, before God, I am not lying!” (1:19–20). It’s not clear why he wants to stress the point so strongly. Is it because he doesn’t want anyone to think that his message was passed along to him by the original disciples of Jesus, most of whom he never met? In any event, what is clear is the contrast with Acts. There, when Paul arrives in Jerusalem directly after being converted, he meets with apostles and spends some time among them—not just with Peter and James, but apparently with all of them (9:26–30).

These differences between what Acts says about Paul and what Paul says about himself can be multiplied time and again, especially if we were to turn to Pauline letters other than Galatians. One reason the differences matter is that Paul wants to distance himself from the apostles to claim that his message came directly from Christ, not from those who were apostles before him. The book of Acts, on the other hand, wants to insist that Paul conferred with the other apostles before he started taking his message out into the mission field. Moreover, for Paul the other apostles gave him no message that Christ had not already revealed to him. If the others, even Peter and James, disagreed with him, then they were disagreeing not with him, but with God, who had revealed himself to Paul through Christ. For Acts, on the other hand, there is no possibility of Paul and the others disagreeing. God informed them all equally of the truth of the gospel, and they all preach the gospel. It is the same message, the same theology, the same practical conclusions: they are all on the same page, up and down the line.

The other reason the differences between Paul and Acts matter is because Acts claims to be written by someone who was a companion of Paul. But given the numerous discrepancies between Paul’s letters and the book of Acts, that looks highly unlikely. The author of Acts never names himself, and to that extent he is writing anonymously. But church tradition, starting about a century after the book was written, attributed the book to someone named Luke. And why Luke?

The reasoning is a bit complicated, but it goes like this. The first important point to make is that the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, both of them anonymous, were written by the same author. This is shown by their similar theological views, their shared vocabulary and writing style, and such clear indications as the opening verses of the two books, both of which are dedicated to someone named Theophilus. The second book actually indicates that it is the second of two books written to this person. Almost certainly, then, the author of Acts is the author of Luke. Acts is the second volume of a two-volume work.

But why think it was written by someone named Luke? Even though the Gospel of Luke gives no hint as to its author, there are clues that surely must be intentional in the book of Acts. In four passages of Acts the author stops speaking in the third person about what “they” (Paul and his companions) were doing and starts speaking about what “we” were doing (16:10–17; 20:5–16; 21:1–18; 27:1–28:16). This is someone who is claiming to have been with Paul as a traveling companion during his missionary journeys. But he doesn’t say who he is.⁷

Readers over the centuries have thought, however, that his identity could be inferred. This author is someone who is especially concerned with the Gentile mission of the early church and who is particularly invested in showing that Gentiles do not have to become Jews in order to be Christian. It is sensible to conclude that this person was probably himself a Gentile. So now we are narrowing the matter down a bit; the author is allegedly a Gentile traveling companion of Paul. Do we know of any such persons?

In the letter to the Colossians we learn of three persons who were Gentile companions of Paul: Epaphras, Demas, and Luke the physician (Col. 4:12–14). Of these three, it seems unlikely that Demas could be the author, since we learn elsewhere that Demas “abandoned” Paul (2 Tim. 2:10). Epaphras appears to have been known as the founder of the church in Colossae (Col. 1:5–7), a church that is never mentioned in Acts. That would be odd, if its founder were the author. This leaves then one candidate, Luke the Gentile physician. So we have the age-old assumption that the book of Acts was written by Luke, a traveling companion of Paul. This assumption is found already in the late second-century church father Irenaeus. Irenaeus was writing a century after the book of Acts was produced. He is nonetheless the first surviving Christian author to make extensive reference to the book, and he indicates, based on his knowledge of the “we” passages, that “Luke was inseparable from Paul, and was his fellow-laborer in the gospel, as he himself clearly evinces.”⁸

Despite this ancient tradition, the problems with identifying Luke as the author of the book are rife. For one thing, the idea that Luke was a Gentile companion of Paul comes from Colossians, a book that appears to have been forged in Paul’s name after his death. To be sure, there is also a Luke named in Paul’s authentic letter of Philemon (v. 24), but nothing is said there about his being a Gentile. He is simply mentioned in a list of five other people. An even bigger problem presents itself in the fact that there are so many discrepancies between what Acts says about Paul with what Paul says about himself.

I’ve mentioned only three of these discrepancies. There are many others.⁹ They involve just about every aspect of the historical Paul. Paul’s theology and preaching differ between Acts and the letters; other differences are in Paul’s attitude toward pagans, his relationship to the Jewish law, his missionary strategy, and his itinerary. At just about every point where it is possible to check what Acts says about Paul with what Paul says about himself in his authentic letters, there are discrepancies. The conclusion is hard to escape that Acts was probably not written by one of Paul’s traveling companions.

But why would the author then speak in the first person on four occasions? Anyone reading this book so far should have no trouble figuring out why. The author is making a claim about himself. He is not naming himself. He is simply claiming to be a traveling companion of Paul’s and therefore unusually well suited to give a “true” account of Paul’s message and mission. But he almost certainly was not a companion of Paul’s. On the one hand, he was writing long after Paul and his companions were dead. Scholars usually date Acts to around 85 CE or so, over two decades after Paul’s death. On the other hand, he seems to be far too poorly informed about Paul’s theology and missionary activities to have been someone with firsthand knowledge. If the author is claiming to be someone he is not, what kind of work is he writing? A book written with a false authorial claim is a forgery. Obviously the authorial claim in this case is not as boldfaced as in, say, 1 Timothy or 3 Corinthians, whose authors directly say they are Paul. But the claim of Acts is clear nonetheless; the author indicates that he was a participant in and eyewitness to Paul’s mission, even though he was not.

It should not be objected that if the author wanted his readers to be convinced he was a companion of Paul, he would have been a lot more explicit about his identity, that is, he necessarily would have named himself or been more emphatic in his self-identification as a cotraveler with Paul. This kind of objection about what an author “would have” done is never very persuasive. For modern readers to tell ancient authors what they should have done in order to be more convincing is actually a bit amusing. Why should the author of Acts have done anything other than what he did? How could he possibly have been any more successful at deceiving his readers? He was spectacularly successful doing it the way he did. Readers for eighteen hundred years accepted without question that the author was none other than Luke, the traveling companion of Paul. By inserting just a small handful of first-person pronouns into his account the author succeeded in producing a forgery that continues to deceive readers down to the present day.

The reason for the forgery, in any event, is clear, or at least one of the many reasons is. This author wants his readers to think he is Paul’s companion and therefore has firsthand knowledge of Paul’s mission. Paul, in this account, agrees with the apostles before him, especially Peter and James, on every point of theological and practical importance. The earliest church was in firm and essential harmony. Peter and Paul were not at odds, as other authors were claiming. Together they declared that salvation has gone to the Gentiles, who do not have to be Jews in order to be Christians.

Gnostic and Anti-Gnostic Forgeries

EARLY CHRISTIAN GNOSTICISM

The most intense and vitriolic conflicts of the second and third centuries involved a variety of Christian groups that scholars have called “Gnostic.” Gnostic Christianity was a remarkably complex phenomenon, but for our purposes here I need give simply a broad and basic overview.¹⁰

As I mentioned in Chapter 3, the term “Gnostic” comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means “knowledge.” A wide range of early Christian groups claimed that salvation did not come from faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, but from acquiring the secret knowledge, gnosis, that Christ taught. This knowledge was actually self-knowledge, knowledge of who you really were, deep inside, where you came from, how you got here, and how you can return. Gnostics maintained that some of us are not just flesh-and-blood human beings. We have a spark of divinity within us that originated in the heavenly realm, but that has fallen into the material world and become trapped inside our mortal bodies. The goal of Gnostic religions was to teach the secret knowledge needed to free this element of the divine, so that it can return to its heavenly home. In the Christian forms of Gnosticism (there were non-Christian forms as well), it is Christ who comes from the heavenly realm above to provide us with this secret knowledge.

There were a large number of Gnostic groups with a mind-boggling array of different teachings and beliefs. Many of these groups described the fall of the divine sparks through complicated and confusing mythological tales that tried to explain how both the divine realm above and this material world below came into existence. Even though the myths of the various groups differed from one another significantly, many of them shared similar features.

In many of these myths the originating point of all that is was a divine being who was completely spirit; there was nothing material about him/it. This divine being generated other divinities who were manifestations of his various characteristics: silence, intellect, truth, word, life, and so on. Some of these divine beings generated yet other divine beings, until there was a populated realm of the divine. But one of these beings—in some texts it is Sophia, the Greek word for “Wisdom”—fell from the divine realm and generated other beings who were not fully divine, since they came into existence outside of the realm of the divine. One of these other beings ignorantly thought that it was the superior God and, with the help of the others, captured its mother and created the material world as a place to imprison her, inside human bodies. This ignorant creator God is the God of the Old Testament, the God of the Jews.

So the material world we live in is not a good place; it is a place of imprisonment. The God of the Jews is not the ultimate divinity, but is inferior, ignorant, and possibly even malicious. The goal of salvation is not to be put into a right relationship with the creator God, but to escape his clutches. Salvation does not come when this fallen creation is returned to its original pristine state (a return to the Garden of Eden); it comes by escaping this material world. The end of time will not bring a salvation of the flesh; it will bring a deliverance from the flesh. This salvation comes when the sparks trapped within our bodies learn the secrets of how they came to be here and the knowledge of how they can escape.

Since in the Christian Gnostic systems it is Christ who comes from the divine realm to deliver this secret knowledge, he obviously could not be a part of this material world itself. He was not a fleshly being. So we have the two forms of docetic thought that I mentioned in Chapter 2. Some Gnostics maintained that Jesus only appeared to be human (like Marcion, who was not a Gnostic). Others claimed that the divine Christ entered into the man Jesus at his baptism and then left him before he died, since the Christ could not suffer. In either way of understanding Christ, he was not a real, flesh-and-blood, suffering, and dying human who was returned to the flesh at his resurrection. Like the other sparks of the divine, he escaped the flesh and the material world, which houses it, in order to return to his heavenly home.

Because Gnostics who taught such views denigrated the material world and the God who created it, they were seen as a serious threat by other Christians who maintained that there was only one God, not an entire realm of divinities; that God had made the world and that it was good, not inferior or evil; that he had formed human flesh and would redeem human flesh; and that salvation came in the body, not separate from the body. Moreover, Christian opponents of Gnosticism maintained that Christ himself was a real flesh-and-blood human being whose real suffering and death brought salvation and whose resurrection was a resurrection in the flesh, in which he now lives and will live forevermore.

These alternative anti-Gnostic views were taught by such prominent Christian authors as the second-century Irenaeus and the third-century Tertullian, authors whose writings have been known and widely read for many centuries. The Gnostics ended up losing these debates, and their own works were by and large destroyed. It is only in modern times that Gnostic writings have been discovered, most notably in a remarkable but completely serendipitous uncovering of an entire library of Gnostic texts in 1945 near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi.¹¹

This so-called Nag Hammadi library contains forty-six different documents, a few of which are in duplicate. Some of them detail the mythological views of this or that Gnostic group, others are mystical reflections on the nature of reality or of the human’s place in it, others are secret revelations that Jesus delivers to his disciples after his “resurrection,” and still others are collections of Jesus’s earthly teachings. Some of these writings were produced in the names of the apostles. They are, in other words, Gnostic forgeries.

GNOSTIC FORGERIES

We knew about Gnostic forgeries for a long time before we actually had any of them. The fourth-century heresy hunter Epiphanius, for example, in a book that attacks eighty different groups of “heretics,” talks about one particularly nefarious Gnostic group that he calls the Phibionites. In his attack on this group Epiphanius reports that they used a whole range of pseudonymous writings, including a Gospel of Eve, the Lesser Questions of Mary (Magdalene), the Greater Questions of Mary, the Books of Seth, the Apocalypses of Adam, the Birth of Mary, and the Gospel of Philip.¹² The Gospel of Philip was discovered at Nag Hammadi, although it is impossible to know whether it is the same book that Epiphanius was referring to. We also have a writing called the Birth of Mary, but there is nothing Gnostic about it, and so it too may be a different book. None of the other books survives.¹³

But plenty of other Gnostic forgeries do. Among the Nag Hammadi writings that set forth Gnostic views in the names of the apostles is a Secret Book of John (i.e., the son of Zebedee), which lays out in graphic detail one version of the Gnostic myth, and an Apocalypse of Paul, which describes a mystical ascent of the apostle through the heavens, narrated in the first person. There are two apocalypses of James and the aforementioned Gospel of Philip. And most famously of all there is the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus allegedly recorded by Judas Didymus Thomas, who was reputed in some regions of the early church to have been the twin brother of Jesus.¹⁴

Rather than discuss all the Gnostic forgeries here, I will consider just two, which are particularly interesting, because they not only attest a Gnostic point of view, but also argue against the view that eventually became “orthodox,” that is, the view represented by such authors as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius, which was eventually accepted as “true” over against the teachings of “false gnosis.”

The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter

We have already seen one Apocalypse of Peter in Chapter 2. At Nag Hammadi a second one was discovered, a secret revelation given to Simon Peter.¹⁵ The one we already examined emphasized strongly the bodily nature of the afterlife, where people are blissfully rewarded or horrifically punished, physically, for how they lived in this life. The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter takes a radically different view, arguing that those who believe in the importance of the flesh, whether Christ’s own flesh or the fleshly life of humans, have completely misunderstood and corrupted the truth.

This book is also written in the first person, allegedly by Jesus’s disciple Peter. It begins with a discussion between Christ and Peter on the day of Jesus’s death, after which it narrates what “really” happened at the crucifixion. This is one of the more bizarre descriptions of Christ’s death that you will ever read. In the opening dialogue Christ strongly emphasizes the need for proper “knowledge” for salvation and condemns Christians who lack this knowledge, saying that “they are blind and have no leader” (72.12–13). The non-Gnostic leaders of the Christian churches who praise Christ are blaspheming him and are themselves both blind and deaf (73.13–14). This is especially the case, because they “hold on to the name of a dead man” that is, they think that it is the crucified Jesus who matters for salvation. But how wrong they are! “They do not understand” (76.28–35). These “bishops and deacons” are dried up and barren channels who provide no life-giving water.

After Christ’s attack on those who value material existence and who think that his death brings salvation comes the narrative of the crucifixion. While Peter and Christ are talking, Peter sees Jesus, down below the hill where they are standing, “apparently” seized by his enemies and crucified. But above the cross he sees another image of Christ, this one laughing at the entire proceeding. Considerably confused, Peter asks the Christ standing next to him what he is seeing. Christ replies that the one above the cross is the “living Jesus,” and the one on the cross “is the substitute,” that is, the stand-in for the real Jesus, who cannot be crucified because he is not really a flesh-and-blood human being. The body being crucified is “the abode of demons, the stony vessel in which they live, the man of Elohim” (the name of the Old Testament God). The one above the cross is laughing at the ignorance of those crucifying him, because they are blind and think that they can kill the Christ. But they can’t. He is a spirit, beyond suffering.

This, then, is a Gnostic evaluation of the world and Christ’s place in it. Christ’s death is not what matters. Salvation comes by accepting his true teaching, which denigrates the material world and the human flesh. His flesh did not matter, and neither does the flesh of his followers. This view is presented through an impeccable authority, a firsthand account by Peter himself, or at least by a writing forged in his name.

The Book of Thomas the Contender

An even more direct attack on the flesh is found in another Gnostic writing known as the Book of Thomas the Contender, also found at Nag Hammadi.¹⁶ This book too is pseudepigraphal; it is said to be a revelation to Thomas, Jesus’s twin brother, but written down by “Matthaias.” Scholars typically take this figure to be Matthew, author of the First Gospel.

In this book Christ gives a revelation just before he ascends to heaven. The goal of the revelation is to emphasize the importance of self-knowledge: “Those who have not known themselves have known nothing, but those who have known themselves already have acquired knowledge about the depth of the All” (138.16–18). Knowing oneself means knowing that the real you is not the “you” of your body. It is the spirit, which is separate from the flesh.

Christ points out that the human body is like that of all the animals, as it comes into being through intercourse. Moreover, it survives by eating other creatures and changing. But anything that changes will eventually dissipate and exist no more. So too with humans: “The vessel of their flesh will pass away” (141.6–7). The one who hopes to have salvation in the flesh is therefore to be pitied: “Woe to you who hope in the flesh and in the prison that will perish.”

Since the body is not to be redeemed, the desires of the body are not to be indulged. One of the overarching points of the book is that fleshly lusts entrap a soul in the body, and anyone who succumbs to the fires of desire will be punished in the fires of the afterlife. So the author exhorts his readers to seek for the salvation that comes by escaping the body: “Watch and pray that you may not remain in the flesh, but that you may leave the bondage of the bitterness of this life…. When you leave the pains and the passions of the body, you will receive rest from the Good One. You will reign with the King, you united with him and he with you, from now on and forever” (145.9–14).

This is not really a revelation to Thomas written down by Matthias, however. It is another Gnostic forgery, produced in order to oppose the teachings of other Christians that fleshly existence matters.

ANTI-GNOSTIC FORGERIES

Gnostics were not, of course, the only ones who used forgeries to promote their views. The “orthodox” Christians who opposed them responded in kind by publishing forgeries of their own.

3 Corinthians

We have already seen one forgery that could well have served an anti-Gnostic purpose, 3 Corinthians. Earlier I talked about 3 Corinthians being directed against Marcion, who, like the Gnostics, devalued the life of the flesh. It is hard to know exactly whom the pseudonymous author has in mind when he affirms the flesh of Christ and the salvation of the flesh. Possibly he is attacking all groups that held to contrary views. But at least his own view is not hard to discern. His overarching emphasis is that Christ came into this world that he might “save all flesh by his own flesh and that he might raise us in the flesh from the dead as he has presented himself to us as our example.”

For this author, Jesus was really born of Mary. This was in fulfillment of what the prophets of the Old Testament had declared. These prophets were spokespersons of the one true God, who had created the world and who was the “almighty,” not some kind of lower, inferior divinity. Precisely in “his own body, Jesus Christ saved all flesh,” and it will be in the flesh that his followers will experience ultimate salvation at the resurrection. Here, then, in 3 Corinthians, forgeries of the heretics are countered by a forgery of the orthodox, a letter claiming to be written by Paul, but in fact written by an author living much later.

Epistula Apostolorum

As a second and final example of an orthodox forgery I can mention a second-century book known as the Epistula Apostolorum, the “Epistle of the Apostles.”¹⁷ This is a letter allegedly written after the resurrection by the twelve apostles, who name themselves and write in the first person, in opposition to the “false apostles” Simon and Cerinthus. Simon we have met before as the archheretic of the second century, maligned, for example, in the Acts of Peter and the Pseudo-Clementines. Here he is accompanied by another notorious heretic, Cerinthus. Both are attacked for being filled with “deceit.” This charge is thick with irony, of course, in a writing that is forged in order to make its readers believe the apostles were really writing it.

The letter presents a revelation that Jesus gives to the apostles after his resurrection, much as the Book of Thomas the Contender and other Gnostic writings give the “secret teachings” of Christ after the resurrection. But here the emphasis is completely anti-Gnostic. Few documents stress as heavily as this one the importance of the flesh. Jesus is said to have had a real crucifixion and a real physical resurrection, as noted by the apostle Andrew, for example, who saw Jesus’s footprints on the ground after he had been raised: “A ghost, a demon leaves no print in the ground,” he insists (chap. 11). The apostles stress: “We felt him, that he had truly risen in the flesh.”

Christ himself says, “I…put on your flesh, in which I was born and died and was buried and rose again” (chap. 19); and he indicates that “the flesh of every one will rise with his soul alive and his spirit” (chap. 24). Anyone who teaches anything different (the authors of the Book of Thomas the Contender and the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter!) will suffer eternal punishment, involving real, physical pain (chap. 29).

It is interesting that this book explicitly claims to be written against those who “deliberately say what is not true” (chap. 50). This is a book that deliberately claims to be written by apostles who had been dead for a century.

Conclusion

ONE OF THE MOST fascinating features of early Christianity is that so many different Christian teachers and Christian groups were saying so many contrary things. It is not just that they said different things. They often said just the opposite things. There is only one God. No, there are many gods. The material world is the good creation of a good God. No, it comes from a cosmic disaster in the divine realm. Jesus came in the flesh. No, he was totally removed from the flesh. Eternal life comes through the redemption of the flesh. No, it comes through escaping the flesh. Paul taught these things. No, Paul taught those other things. Paul was the true apostle. No, Paul misunderstood the message of Jesus. Peter and Paul agreed on every theological point. No, they were completely at odds with one another. Peter taught that Christians were not to follow the Jewish law. No, he taught that the Jewish law continued to be in force. And on and on and on, world without end.

Not only did those on every side in all of these debates think that they were right and that their opponents were wrong; they also maintained in all sincerity and honesty that their views were the ones taught by Jesus and his apostles. What is more, they all, apparently, produced books to prove it, books that claimed to be written by apostles and supported their own points of view. What is perhaps most interesting of all, the vast majority of these apostolic books were in fact forged. Christians intent on establishing what was right to believe did so by telling lies, in an attempt to deceive their readers into agreeing that they were the ones who spoke the truth.