Episode 255: John Dominic Crossan – The Other Gospels

Pete  

You’re listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I’m Pete Enns.

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas. 

Intro  

Jared  

Hey everyone. Before we get started today, we wanted to let you know about our September class. It’s called “The S-word” taught by Dr. Matthew Croasmun.

Pete  

It’s a one night class and Matthew will explore Paul’s use of sin-

Jared  

That’s the S-word by the way.

Pete  

I guess that’s the S-word, right? 

Jared  

It could have been anything.

Pete  

RIght? I figured that out.

Jared  

It could have been a lot of things.

Pete  

But he’s going to explore Paul’s uses of sin language in Romans 5-8, and how we might see the effects of sin at play in our world today.

Jared  

And when you sign up for the class, you get the live class, a live Q&A session, downloadable class slides, and a link to the class recording in case you can’t make it live and or you know, you want to watch it at another time. And it’s taking place on September 27th, from 8-9:30pm Eastern Time.

Pete  

Right, now it’s pay-what-you-can, right, until the class ends—it’s always the case, folks—and then it costs $25 to download. But you can get all of our classes, if you want to do this, and I highly recommend it, for just $12 a month by becoming a member of the Society of Normal People. And for more info and to sign up go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/Sin. 

Pete  

Hey, everybody, on today’s episode, we’re talking about the other gospels with John Dominic Crossan, who, by the way, goes by Dom as you will hear.

Jared  

What a surreal moment for me to call John Dominic Crossan, to call him Dom-

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

The whole time. Because my upbringing, there were certain people who embodied the liberal, sort of like the pied piper, away from actual Christianity.

Pete  

That’d be Pete Enns. Who else?

Jared  

Pete- No, this is without-

Pete  

This is before?

Jared  

This is before—No one knew who you were back then. 

Pete  

Jared  

You were talking about Dom. 

Pete  

This is Dom though. 

Jared  

But there were two people that you had to steer clear of, because, frankly, on this side of things, it’s because I think scholars were intimidated—you know, the scholars I would have grown up with in more conservative situations—would have been threatened by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

And then, to go through this faith transition and just see how much of a powerhouse scholar Dom is, has been. It’s just one of those full circle moments-

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

To say, “What am I doing, I’m sitting here on a podcast talking to this person-“

Pete  

And there’s always disagreements, but the thing is that he’s a premier historical Jesus scholar in the world and has been for a long time. Like him or love him but, he’s an important voice.

Jared  

Usually, this is when we go through the books that our guests have written, and there are literally too many to name. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

So just google him if you don’t know who he is.

Pete  

Yeah. And you can find out he was a monk, which he said too, for 19 years.

Jared  

Yeah.

Pete  

That’s interesting, right? 

Jared  

You could write a lot of books, I guess, if you are-

Pete  

Yeah I guess so.

Jared  

A monk for 19 years.

Pete  

Yeah. And not having sex. 

Jared  

Yeah, that’s true.

Pete  

Alright.

Jared  

Get a lot done. 

Pete  

Jared  

Got a lot of energy that’s gotta go somewhere.

Pete  

That’s… So [Laughing]

Jared  

Alright [Laughing] let’s get into this enlightening episode-

Pete  

I think we just ruined the whole thing. Anyway.

Jared  

Pete  

Folks, enjoy this episode, it was so much fun having John Dominic Crossan with us.

Intro  

Dom  

“You have a tradition of interpretation and counter-interpretation. So good news, “news” is a fact. But “good” is an interpretation. Then you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Gospel “according to” and that’s forcing you again and again to interpret, what does it mean for me? What does it mean for us? What does it mean for now? If you’re not doing that, then we ain’t gospeling. We’re just talking.”

Intro  

Intro  

Jared  

Well, Dom, welcome to the podcast. It’s really great to have you.

Dom  

And a pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much for having me.

Jared  

Absolutely. It’s been a long time coming. So let’s jump right in with this question of this idea of extra-canonical or non-canonical gospels might be a new idea for some folks. So what are the texts that are considered to be non-canonical? And what what do we mean by that when we say non-canonical?

Dom  

Well, on the one hand, you could say anything that claims to be a gospel, and that isn’t in the New Testament with the four that are in there, is a non-canonical gospel. But that’s too big. That’s not really what we mean. What we’re talking about is texts, basically, probably from the very first and second century, at least claiming to be from the first and second century, which are claiming to be gospels. There may be “gospel” in the title. And the big question is this: Do they have materials in there that gives us information, or even insight, into, say, the historical Jesus that we don’t get from the four canonical gospels? That’s really what’s at issue. Otherwise, I don’t think anyone would care too much. Do they have new stuff in there? Or do they have stuff that is older than what we have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Contrary to them? Dependent on them or independent of them? So these are the real questions that are coded behind the word the “non-canonical” gospels.

Jared  

Well, maybe a little bit more context, if you can, on, you know, we’ve had our Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in our Bibles for a long time. When were these extra-canonical gospels discovered? Have we known about them for a very long time? Like, what’s the historical data?

Dom  

Two ways. Sometimes we’ve known about, say, the Gospel of Peter, [the cordial one,] because some early father—we didn’t hear too much from early mothers, to be honest with you—some early father mentioned it. That’s my- That might be all we know. There is something called the “Gospel of X” whoever that is, and we don’t have it. The other real thing is this: it’s not that Egyptian Christians were particularly Christian over anyone else, but their sands are very, very dry. So if a papyrus, even a papyrus manuscript got into the sands of Egypt, either because it was buried for safekeeping, maybe in a sealed jar, or even was just simply abandoned as rubbish paper, and managed to get buried in the sand, the odds are it would last for two thousand years, and onto the day when it was dug up, would not start disintegrating. So a huge trove of the non-canonical gospels and indeed, of the canonical gospels, comes from Egypt, because it’s so dry.

Pete  

Okay, so we have these non-canonical gospels, and you said, there’s so many of them, but are there certain core examples that everybody talks about? And that, you know, normal people might want to know about?

Dom  

Alright. Let me talk about types rather than just numbers of them. 

Pete  

Okay.

Dom  

I talk, and we all talk, about the Gospels plural. The four Gospels. The non-canonical gospels. Let me say that most of the people in the New Testament would be screaming to hear that plural. They would insist that there is only one gospel, euangelion, in the singular in Greek, it is “Jesus the Christ.” Now you can have the Gospel according to Matthew, according to Paul, but you have only one gospel. So it’s kind of a shorthand for you and I say, I do say, of course, “the Gospels.” If you wanted to be technical, you’d have to call them “gospel versions.” So they are interpretations by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, or Paul, of the one Gospel. Paul would scream to hear the plural. He would say “There was only one gospel! There’s only one gospel!” Yeah, but that’s the Gospel according to… 

Anyway, granted that, here’s really what’s at issue, let me get it up front. The four that we have—I’m leaving Paul aside for the moment—the four that we have are what I’m going to call “narrative gospels.” [Chuckles] For normal people, that means if you took Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, to a producer in Hollywood, they could imagine making a story out of them because they are a story. They have a kind of a beginning with John the Baptist, maybe there’s a birth story in Matthew and Luke, or John and Mark don’t have that, but at least they start with John the Baptist, okay, we get that. Then Jesus is in Galilee for a while, then he goes to Jerusalem, crucifixion, resurrection. It’s a story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Aristotle would be quite happy with it. So that’s a type, it’s called a narrative gospel. I’m calling it that. What is of importance for everyone to understand is a type was canonized by giving you those for example, and certain other types were kept out of there, other options. It’s not that these were the only type that was available from the very beginning. There were two other major types that were, let me say, not accepted or quietly dismissed, or declared heretical. And it’s important that you know these two types—whether you like them or not is irrelevant—to understand that the type that was chosen was just one option.

Pete  

Yeah, well, okay, so what are those other types?

Dom  

Alright, the first thing, I think we’ll say the most important one that I’m going to put my name on it, is one we’re going to call “sayings gospel.” S-A-Y-I-N-G-S. Jesus is imagined, these are not just memories. “Oh, he said this. Oh, yeah, remember that good one. Yeah, that was a really good one about blessings of the poor. Yeah, I remember that one.”

Pete  

Dom  

It is divine wisdom speaking on earth. So we want the sayings of divine wisdom. It’s an obvious type. What Jesus said is so precious, he’s not just, you know, a saint or even a martyr, he’s speaking the Word of God so we should keep his sayings and remember that, and of course live by them. You know, you’re not keeping them as an exercise in memory, but an exercise in imitation.

Pete  

Would it be fair to refer to… Is Jesus sort of more sage-like, in these saying gospels?

Dom  

I hesitate to say that, because I once used it, and then I got kind of pilloried for it as if I’m saying, “Well, he’s just another guy with an opinion.” No, there’s a theology behind these gospels. 

Pete  

Okay.

Dom  

And they’re not really, say, “Well, you know, this is what Jesus said but you know, the other guy says something different so…” There’s lots of sages around. There’s lots of prophets around. They’re talking about Jesus as divine wisdom communicating, it’s like… It’s like a Great Divine “shut up and listen”. [Chuckles] Yeah, this is divine wisdom speaking, it’s not just kind of a good opinion or something else. So there’s transcendental claims being made by these sayings and it would be false to simply say, “Well, you know, we have the sayings of Chairman Mao and lots of collections of wisdom sayings and Proverbs.” There’s a theological, transcendental framework.

Pete  

Okay, so these sayings gospels—and we can get into examples of what constitutes this type—but are these devoid of any narrative content at all? Or do they presume the narrative of the other gospels? Do they… Does Jesus talk about his resurrection or something like that? Or his crucifixion? Or is it really just a lot of divine wisdom, a lot of sayings, page after page after page?

Dom  

And now we’re getting very close to the crux of why these are never going to be accepted. They’re really not narratives. If I go back to my example, take a collection, say the Gospel of Thomas, take it to a producer in Hollywood and say, “Please make me a story.” He’ll say, “Go away. There’s no story here.”

Pete  

Dom  

“I can’t just put a camera in front of a talking head” as it were, even if it’s a divine head, everyone’s going to be bored. So I think that’s the major issue. There may be a mini-book, somebody says, “Jesus says,” you may have a conversation, a one part, two part conversation. Jesus may tell a parable, for example. That would certainly be kind of a mini-story. But it’s a story by Jesus, not a story about Jesus. So a decision was made, and made very, very early that no, this is not what we want. We have this, we have, as it were, we call them “collections of the sayings of Jesus.” But we want them in a narrative framework. And if necessary, we create the narrative.

Pete  

Alright, so before we flesh out a little bit more of the sayings gospels and maybe give an example or two, could you just give us- You said there was another type, I think, in addition to the sayings gospels, and the narrative gospels.

Dom  

Yes. And this other type in the way, it’s what you might say, inquiring minds would want to know. For example, in the Gospel according to Luke, you have Jesus—at least between Luke and the Acts of the Apostles—you have Jesus back for 40 days, between the resurrection and the ascension. Okay, people might say, “Well, gee, I really would like to hear from Jesus during those 40 days. Don’t tell me he talked about the Kingdom of God, I know that. He’s been doing that for X number of years. Now he’s back as it were, the resurrected Jesus? I want to hear about that. Don’t tell me about his life and all these parables he told, I’m not interested in that. I’d love to hear what’s going on in those 40 years.” 

So another type of Gospel begins where ours ends. It starts, as it were, with the resurrection—I’m making this up a little bit. “When Jesus came out of the tomb, he said…” And then you have not so much sayings, but a long discourse or possibly a conversation, let me say, “Jesus came out of the tomb and Peter said to him, ‘What is heaven like?’” Or “Mary said to him, ‘Tell us more about heaven.’” In other words, it’s kind of obvious when you think of it, wouldn’t people love to know not just what Jesus said when he walked around in sandals, but when he came back in robes of glory, so I’m going to call these “revelation gospels.” It’s not a great term, because everything is a revelation in one sense. But it’s… You can call them “post-resurrection gospels.” Instead of ending with the resurrection, they begin with the resurrection. So I call them just for at least for convenience “revelation gospels,” and you know what I mean by that. That’s the other third type, major type, at least.

Pete  

That’s not organized by sayings? Or if it’s not presented in a narrative way, how do these revelation gospels present their material?

Dom  

Much more like what I call a conversation, or a dialogue, or a question and answer. In which, ke disciples, it could be Mary, it could be Peter, it could be Peter, James, and John, it could be the 12, sort of as a chorus to say “the 12 asked him” as if they’re all speaking at the same time. So I would say if you think of sayings in the one hand, narrative in the other, these are like dialogue, a little bit like you might say platonic dialogues, the way the philosophy of Plato comes across, somebody asks a question, somebody answers, asks the question, answered. They could be called and maybe that might be a safer term, “dialog gospels?”

Pete  

Dialog. Okay.

Jared  

Yeah. And maybe, just because I think some people might have heard, before we dive into these, can you just give a couple of examples of each one of those that people might have heard of?

Dom  

Well, the gospel of Thomas is probably the most famous extra-canonical, highly controversial, and rightly so. It’s terribly important one way or the other. And it’s the sayings that I—I have it right here and I’ll read it to you—here’s how it opens-

Pete  

What—You’re going to read the whole thing to us? 

Dom  

Oh, yes [Laughing] There goes the day.

Pete  

How many hours will that take? Anyway, go ahead.

Dom  

Dom  

“These are the sacred words which the living Jesus spoke, and which,” now the author, “Didymos Judas Thomas,” his name is really Judas and Didymos and Thomas is a nickname, “the twin” Judas, the twin, wrote down. So “the sacred words which the living Jesus spoke, and which Judas Thomas wrote down.” Alright, that’s one way then you have sayings and your parables of Jesus and you have they-said-he-said’s and so it goes on and you can number them however you want. And at the end of it—it says, it does say in the manuscript, “the Gospel according to Thomas.” That’s one example. It’s an extra-canonical, non-canonical gospel, discovered at a place called Nag Hammadi, a little bit north of Luxor, the Valley of the Kings. Most people would know about that in Egypt. 

And again, came out of a sealed jar, which [Chuckles] started decomposing the moment the seal was broken, of course. So that would be one example from 1945 of a gospel, the gospel according to Thomas, and it’s a sayings gospel. Another example, let me read you, again, this would be the other type. It’s called the Apocryphon, or the apocalypse, if you want, “the secret gospel,” this one is of James. Here’s the key verse again, at the opening. “Now, when the twelve disciples were sitting together, recalling what Jesus said, whether in secret or openly and putting it in books,” [Chuckles] you can see we’re already into writing—”…the Savior appeared.” So it’s right, post-resurrection, “after he’d been gone for so long.” And then they start the conversation they-said-he-said. So the clues are sayings, narrative, dialogue. And the two other types as it were, besides narrative, were—let me use a blunt term for the moment—censored out. So it’s terribly important to you know, for people to know that it was a narrative type that was canonized and one example, two examples, three examples, four examples, that didn’t worry, as long as it was a narrative.

Ad Break  

Pete  

I think to get more of a feel for this, Dom, I mean, not to put you on the spot. Can you read a passage from somewhere in the Gospel of Thomas that has proved to be particularly controversial?

Dom  

Okay. I choose this one, because it starts with something that you say, “oh, yeah, we know this stuff from the New Testament, this is the same old stuff.” Let me read you two. Here’s one. Here’s a controversial one. “Jesus said,” most of them will start with Jesus said, that’s typical in the sayings. “If those who lead you say to you, see the kingdom is in heaven,” [Chuckles] “Then the birds of the heavens will get there before you. If they say to you it is in the sea, then the fish will get there before you. But the kingdom of heaven is within you and outside of you.” That’s deliberately mocking the apocalyptic idea of watching for signs, you’ll look up to the heavens, you’ll see a coming, look out over the sea, you’ll see the kingdom coming. It’s like saying, “it’s already here, dummy. It’s already here, open your eyes. It’s inside you and it’s all around you. That’s where you can’t see it. It’s like air, as it were.” 

So that would be highly controversial, of course, because it wipes out in the apocalyptic reasoning, looking for signs of the times calculating how much time was left before the return of Jesus. It simply mocks it, you know, satirizes it. That you think the birds will get there before you then. Here’s a second one, I’ll just read you two from Thomas. This one starts off fine. It says “Jesus saw some infants who were being suckled. He said to his disciples, ‘These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.’” Ooh, that sounds just like, you know, unless you become as little children, you can’t get into the kingdom of God. Oh, that’s just a different version. But—

Pete  

What could go wrong here? This sounds perfectly normal. But there’s more. Right?

Dom  

Yeah, that’s… And this is very often what you get when you’re reading through the Gospel of Thomas, you keep saying, “Hey, I heard that before, but it doesn’t sound the same. It kind of sounds different.” And then if something comes into, yeah, that’s really different but you have that feeling that this Gospel of Thomas knows stuff, he’s not just making it up, as it were. So let me say what I just abbreviated. “They said to him,” now this is where it starts, “If then, we become as children, shall we enter the kingdom?” Then you get this, “’When you make the two one and when you make the inside as the outside, the outside as the inside, the upper as the lower, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male is not male, and the female is not female, then you will enter the kingdom.’” [Laughs]

Pete  

Okay. 

Jared  

Dom  

All of a sudden, you know, we moved into a different world. We started off with children, okay, that should be either innocent or whatever is the model. But what does it mean when you make the male and the female one? Now we’re deep into the theology. [Huffs] In other words, that transcendental core of the Gospel of Thomas. It ain’t just about, oh, yeah, we remember all this stuff he said. For Thomas, where the world went wrong was in the Garden of Eden. But it went wrong when the one became two. When there was the earthling there alone, before it was split into male and female. So this is an ascetic vision of life. We have to give up sex, we have to give up sex, because this is the ideal—for men and for women, by the way—of an ascetic life that is asexual. That’s where we went wrong, not the original sin or something else. It’s the original split as it were. So this is a manifest of the Gospel of Thomas for a certain way of life, backed by a theology.

Jared  

Just to make sure, because I’m trying to get all of the vocabulary here that people might have heard in here. People might have heard the term Gnostic Gospels, because I think that was popular when, you know, on the news and everything they were talking about the Gospel of Thomas and others, there was also Gnostic Gospels. Are those the same of what we’re talking about here? Or are they different?

Dom  

No, we’re talking about a much wider set. You could say the Gnostic Gospels are inside the non-canonical gospels, if you will. But I would not think that Thomas—and we have to get back to this—is Gnostic, Thomas is ascetic.

Jared  

So that’s another way to slice these into different categories or types, ascetic, gnostic, and maybe some other categories. So what would be a Gnostic gospel? And how does that, similar or different than, say the Gospel of Thomas?

Dom  

Alright, now, what is at stake in all of this is what I’m going to call a deep disenchantment with the Roman world. And not with the Roman world because it’s Roman, but because the Roman world is one more example of quotation marks “this world,” which has been alienated from God. So we’re trying to imagine some way of expressing how to live in this world while you’re alienated from its normalcy, to put it bluntly. Now, that’s going on, as you know, of course, in the canonical gospels. We don’t do this, we don’t do that, Paul says, [Chuckles] we don’t do slavery or something like that. 

So also, how do you explain that the world of creation is not the world of civilization, to use my language a little bit. I mean, if God created the world, and God is good and just, then how come it’s in the mess it is? The apocalyptic answer is “don’t worry, it’s just gonna be destroyed pretty soon. Just hang in there. Friday is coming as it were.” Well, Thomas doesn’t have that, as we saw, he doesn’t have the apocalyptic exit strategy, as it were. So he’s trying to figure out how do you live in this world, but not live in this world. And his answer is asceticism. You kind of withdraw from the world as [Chuckles] maybe they did at Qumran, the Essenes at Qumran. And the monks have always done sayings in Hinduism or other religions. It’s a statement of withdrawal from a world that you will not accept as normal. That’s the issue that’s here, how deep is the withdrawal? How total? How partial? How do you do it? And how do you display, openly, your alienation from the world.

Pete  

So the Gospel of Thomas is like a vision for how to live, and the narrative gospels that we have in scripture are… There’s a little bit of that, isn’t there? But the focus is elsewhere.

Dom  

I think it is, I think there is much more of a struggle with the world than the narrative gospels. Because the very fact of a narrative—if you’ve given up on the world for example, apocalyptically, there’s no point in making a narrative. That’s why Jesus could not have been really an apocalypticist because apocalypticists don’t tell good parables. [Laughs] They don’t care about watching carefully enough to tell a good story about how the world is, they tell you a good story about how it’s going up in flames and they scare the living daylights out of you, maybe. But that means, you know, why would you bother describing something? Why would you bother describing sowing or something like that? So what you’re trying to do, say, with asceticism is publicly witness withdrawal from what everyone takes as absolutely normal. That you eat and drink and that you marry, sex, have sex, have children. All the normalcy of the world, you withdraw from it, and of course, withdrawal from marriage, sex, having children will end the world, if everyone decided that was the [Chuckles] the way to go, we’d have our own little apocalypse pretty fast. But it is. It is a statement, a witness against the world. I mean, that’s what’s at stake. And what you’re asking is, how profound is the witness? Should we all withdraw into the forest maybe, withdraw into the mountains, into the bogs, into somewhere and leave the world to do what he wants to do? Or should we try to live in it and witness against it? Which is, I think the choice that is made, has been made, of course by Judaism. That’s where it came straight from Judaism into the New Testament. And in one sense, these gospels are considered anti-Jewish. The Gnostic Gospels, I think I would describe as anti-Jewish because they do not accept the Jewish vision of staying in the world, but struggling against it.

Pete  

Okay. Alright. So just again, to sort of get the big picture here for all of us the Gospel of Thomas—would it be fair to say this: The Gospel of Thomas is a particular, you said interpretation, right? It’s an interpretation of the Jesus event for a particular community, perhaps, that were interested in certain kinds of things that… Again, I’m trying to get at whether there was a presumption of the existence of these narrative gospels when the author of the Gospel of Thomas did his thing. Because he’s saying, “that’s not good enough, let’s- We have to do something different.” Or are they just on a very different path altogether and not even concerned about some of that stuff?

Dom  

I can see, in the Gospel of Thomas, definitely—I mean, I read it to you—its anti-apocalyptic vision. So it certainly knows an apocalyptic type of Christianity. It certainly knows it. It mocks it, it laughs at it, it jeers at it. So it has to know that. Does it know the canonical form? I don’t think so. I really don’t. But it knows sayings of Jesus that are apocalyptically oriented. Yes, I think it knows alternative sayings of Jesus. Let me take an example. This is much trickier. There is something which I’m going to call the “Gospel according to Q.” [Laughs] I don’t know if people, if normal people would have heard of what’s called the “Q gospel.” I have to explain it because it is a sayings gospel. There is a consensus of scholarship that Matthew and Luke use, as their primary source, the Gospel of Mark. That’s a consensus of scholarship. I agree with it. In fact, I always consider consensus of scholarship as sort of a miracle, because usually we can never agree with one another. But at least I accept that. And once you accept that, you notice that also in Matthew and Luke, there’s a large amount of consecutive material, which is not in Mark—if you have the entire length columns, you can see it easily. But they’re the same in Matthew and Luke. That was first discovered by German scholars and they called it simply “The source.” Speaking German they call it the “Quelle,” Q-U-E-L-L-E. Just [Chuckles] the German word for “the source,” the other source, besides Mark. So we call it Q. It’s a sayings gospel. So now wait a minute, now we’ll really get them confused. We got a sayings gospel like a Trojan horse inside the New Testament. It got in there because Matthew and Luke decided to incorporate it along with Mark—see, where we’re going?—they wouldn’t accept it straight, but they fitted into the gospel of Mark. So you have Mark, and they took Q and they sayings and they fitted it in, in the framework of Mark. So it’s inside the New Testament. Now, what’s fascinating about it, is its apocalyptic sayings of Jesus. So—I can’t prove this—but if I were to imagine what Thomas has read and doesn’t like and is mocking, it will come awfully close to the Gospel according to Q, and the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus.

Pete  

It’s just fascinating, you know, that you have in history these diverse interpretations. Even in the four canonical gospels, there’s diversity there, too. But there were these other communities on the outside that—I shouldn’t say on the outside—there were other communities that wrote differently about Jesus and as we’ve been saying all along, some were accepted—four of them—some were not. So maybe can we get into that a little bit, like to talk a little bit more about why these texts were rejected as heretical? Who had the authority to do that? And what’s the deal with this? You know, I mean, was their politics involved? Why are these gospels just on the outside looking in for really the entire history of the church until they were rediscovered?

Dom  

Oh, yeah, there’s politics. Yeah. And sometimes we have to make our own judgment on it. I mean, there’s, there’s table gospels I wouldn’t want around, quite frankly. Here’s what’s actually going on. Suppose, let’s do a counterfactual. Supposing around the year 100, the Roman Empire had said, “we’ve had enough of this stuff, you know, we crucified their leader, now we got these guys still around 50 years later, let’s really try a little genocide here. If you’re a Christian, you get put to death. Period.” Around the year 100. Supposing they went that way, instead of barely, really tolerating Christianity until at least 250, before you first had the Imperial-wide persecution, then it was too late, of course, there was too many. Anything left was for Constantine to give in. 

But suppose that they had really decided to go against as they went against the Celts, for example, and say, “Okay, this religion is against us so it’s forbidden.” Supposing they had done that to Christianity, as soon as they began to understand that it was separate from Judaism. And Nero had figured it out, by the way, of course, after their great fires. These Christians, some are kind of Jews, but not really Jews, so I can punish Christians, and I won’t touch Jews. Supposing they had done that, I think the type of gospels that probably would have become dormant, if we survived as Christians, would have been much closer to the gnostic gospels. That simply said, this whole rotten world is going straight to hell as it were. I’m sorry. I think the narrative gospels would never have gotten an audience. So I think we have to understand the context that made it possible to say, “Okay, we can work,” we being Christianity, “we can work with this world. We don’t like a lot of it. We really don’t. And we’re, we’re going to be in some tensive dialectic with it. But yeah, we can live in it. We’re not going to withdraw from it and sort of consign the whole thing to the rubbish heap of history,” to put it kindly and mildly. We have to think of that. 

Ad Break  

Now, in what happened, because quite frankly, the Roman Empire on the Imperial level, not talking about small local nastinesses, or when they picked off leaders who are causing tumults are stirring up the people, as the Roman said. We can work with the Roman Empire. That’s the decision that made the narrative gospels our story. Okay, you guys have your story—the foundation of the Roman Empire and all the rest of it—we have our story. We can negotiate our story with your story. But yeah, we’re going to live in this world. Because the world is a world of story. We’re not giving up on it, either apocalyptically or gnostically, by saying it’s just too evil to have anything to do with.

Jared  

So in summary, I’m trying to make sure I’m capturing what you’re saying, that in some ways, it was a way to live more peaceably, or maybe not so outright contrary to Roman imperialism, to have these narrative gospels. If they were apocalyptic or the gnostic gospels, it would have been much more stark, it would have been more maybe like the book of Revelation, which is picking on the Roman Empire pretty explicitly, these narrative gospels may tone that down a little bit, maybe a little bit more, “why don’t we try to get along in this society, rather than being outside of it and pointing to it as antithetical?”

Dom  

I think that’s really what’s going on. You mentioned the book of Revelation, that is really going as strong as it can against those, the seven churches and those in the seven churches, who are, in effect, saying, “Yeah, can we just get on with the Roman Empire? Why can’t I do business with the Roman Empire? Why can’t I be a good Christian and a Roman trader?” T-R-A-D-E-R. You’ll notice, for example, in the book of Revelation, you never mention the allegiance, but you hear a lot about the traders, the Roman traders. The big threat is trade, for luring you into the Roman empire into its globalization. So yes, it’s part of the profound politics—I don’t mean at the superficial level politics—that’s going on. How do we live in a world that to one degree or another, on the one hand, God so loved—according to John—God so loved the world, but again and again, in the New Testament, you find statement says, there’s nothing in this world, but. So how is “this world” quotation marks contrary to “the world”? That’s the word. That’s what’s going on.

Jared  

We have this built in diversity, even with the New Testament, this conversation happening within the New Testament itself on what’s our relationship to the world, particularly to the Roman Empire. And it’s interesting to even see, to go back to what you said earlier, this idea of Q being a sayings gospel—which again, just to summarize, because it’s maybe a new concept for others—that scholars are very aware that Matthew and Luke use Mark as their primary source. But then you can also see Matthew and Luke using this other thing, because they have a lot of similarities that aren’t in Mark and that’s this Q and it’s a sayings gospel. So even baked into a narrative gospel that is trying to tone it down, you have this sayings gospel that’s really trying to turn it up. And those get melded together in this tradition, that eventuates into the four gospels we have now in our New Testament.

Dom  

That’s fascinating, honestly, for me, because, as I said, it’s like the Trojan horse, already one got in there and we can, we can see it, but it’s encapsulated. Now, if you look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke on the one hand, and then John on the other—and we don’t have a consensus here among scholars, whether John is dependent on Matthew, Mark, and Luke, may have its own tradition as well, or is completely independent. I’m inclined to think it’s also dependent in many ways because, for example, if you read John chapter six, John’s not interested in the multiplication of loaves and fishes. He wants to get on with Jesus as the bread of life. Let’s drop the fish. He’s not going to be the fish of life. John can’t move fast enough to get rid of the fish and have a long discourse on the bread of life. And it’s magnificent, but the fish get lost somewhere. So even within the Gospels themselves, you have a tradition of interpretation and counter interpretation. Let me insist on that for a second. The word “gospel,” as you know, is a singular word in Greek. Euangelion. We have trouble with “news” because news is a singular plural word, I don’t know which it is. You say the news is good, you don’t say the news are good. So good news. News is a fact, it’s supposed to be a fact at least. But good is an interpretation. So a gospel is openly, honestly, clearly an interpretation. The news is Jesus proclaimed as the Messiah and Son of God. That’s news. Yep. Now, is it good news? Well, it’s good news for some people. It’s not good news for the Romans. It’s not good news for some of the Jewish people. So good news is an interpretation, which means you can’t be a Christian without commitment. Otherwise, you simply say, well, it’s news. Then you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, “the Gospel According to.” They would never say “the Gospel of Matthew,” I say that [Laughs] all the time, for shorthand, the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John. It’s the Gospel according to, and that’s forcing you again and again to interpret. What does it mean for me? What does it mean for us? What does it mean for now? If you’re not doing that, then we ain’t gospeling. We’re just talking.

Pete  

Well, Dom, you know, we’re anticipating the end of this wonderful discussion with you and I’d like to get to something that I think would be of great value for our listeners, and I think for me and Jared as well, just to think about these things more deeply, but talk about the value of these extra-canonical gospels, these non-canonical gospels both for scholarship, like what value do they have in scholarship, but also, maybe to tie that into what value these texts might have just for average readers of the Bible who are either a Christian or interested in Christianity.

Dom  

Well, to be very honest with you, I’ve known individuals whose whole Christian life is absorbed by one or another of these. As for you, it might be, say, for Mark. Or for me, it might be for John. That they find the Gospel of Thomas is ecstatically marvelous. I don’t, to be honest with you. I spent 19 years as a monk and I have complete respect and understanding for the vision of the monastery. It’s just not what I want to do. But I understand a given one might be a breakthrough for somebody else. But they couldn’t see Christ, robed in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, because maybe it’s become too stale or too common or whatever. But I think, apart from that, for me, the more important thing is the fact that we really, in the New Testament, we chose narrative, we chose a story. And we all know that what a story is supposed to do, is draw you into it. [Laughs] Now, it may be a problem, if it gets so stale that you don’t. But by choosing a story, you should be drawn into it. In other words, you should not be able to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John without getting involved. Even if it’s involved to just say, “I don’t like this,” like you’re supposed to get involved. So for me looking at these other two types, and then realizing that we canonized in Christianity, and when I say we, I mean, if I’m using the New Testament, as a Christian, I accept that this was the decision and I’m willing to discuss whether I think today was a good decision or not. As a scholar, if I was studying the history of Christianity, of course, I’d have to know all of this equally well. But if I’m talking now, actually, in the same way as I would, as I might say to you that I don’t like this violence in the book of Revelation. I’m quite willing to make a judgment as a Christian. Also, as a human being. I’m quite willing to make a judgment about, say, Ephesians and Colossians. Take them for granted, you have slaves, well, be kind to them. Okay. I don’t know how not to make a judgment, unless I just don’t care. So I’m forced to think about; what’s the great value of making these [gospels] a story about Jesus? Not the sayings of Jesus, or the revelations of Jesus, but that Jesus was walking around in sandals, saying things, yes, doing things, people reacting to him. I think if you lost that, you’d lose, I think, the heart of Christianity and its continuity with Judaism. Quite frankly, the danger would be Jesus would kind of ascend into heaven and disappear and there’d be no footprints left on the earth. And we would be something else. I’m not saying we’d be evil people, but I am not certain we would be, as I understand to be Christianity.

Jared  

Really appreciate that perspective, that even the structure of what’s made it into our Bibles has an impact in very practical ways that the narrative structure itself invites or indicates this more embodied in the world theological perspective that has this continuity with Judaism, I really appreciate that. That’s a perspective I hadn’t really considered before or thought of before. So thank you so much for coming on. And I have more questions than I do answers, which for me is always a great sign of a good episode.

Pete  

It’s what we do here.

Jared  

Pete  

Jared  

So thanks again. And maybe we’ll have to have you back on again, just to keep this conversation going. I’m sure there’s a lot more we could explore.

Dom  

Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Jared. It’s been a pleasure.

Outro  

Jared  

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Pete  

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Jared  

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Outro  

You’ve just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People! Don’t forget you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Prescott, Stephen Henning, Wesley Duckworth, Savannah Locke, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Natalie Weyand, Jessica Shao, and Lauren O’Connell. 

Outro