Review: Craig Evans’ Fabricating Jesus

In the course of research for an essay on the past 20 years of scholarship on the CA I was led to reading several recent books which critique both the primary texts and the scholars who work on them. Such books include Darrell Bock’s The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities, Ben Witherington’s The Gospel Code: Novel claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci, and Philip Jenkins’ Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way. These books are best described as Christian apologetic. Their aim is to redress the harm they perceive is being done to Christianity as a result of such evils as The DaVinci Code, the Jesus Seminar, Bart Ehrman and other “pseudo-scholarship.” Certainly some material from these books can be useful (particularly Jenkins’ treatment of 19th century apocrypha discoveries, forgeries and the sensationalism that attended them), but the majority of the time the authors’ apologetic interests interfere with their arguments, leading them to make misleading, even erroneous, comments about the texts and CA scholars. Witherington goes so far as to demonize his adversaries in stating, “these scholars, though bright and sincere, are not merely wrong; they are misled. They are oblivious to the fact that they are being led down this path by the powers of darkness” (The Gospel Code, p. 174).

It is in the context of exploring this anti-CA apologetic that I read Craig Evans’ Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. I was treated to a preview of Evans’ perspective at the Ottawa Workshop in September 2006. His paper “The Apocryphal Jesus: Assessing the Possibilities and Problems” touched on several topics found in the book, including critiques of scholarship on Secret Mark, the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Thomas. At the time I thought some of his comments were problematic; now that his views are widely accessible, I can address them more thoughtfully. There is much that Evans covers in the book; I will limit my comments to what he has to say about apocryphal texts.

The book begins with a number of testimonials, many of which were composed by the apologetic authors listed above (including Darrell Bock, Ben Witherington III, and, surprisingly, Lee Strobel, author of The Case for Christ). Strange bedfellows indeed. In his introduction Evans describes himself as a “committed Christian” (p. 9) and is clear about the intent of his book: “to defend the original witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus” (p. 17). He is careful, however, to state that he is not an inerrantist—indeed he has valid scholarly credentials—nevertheless, his training does not prevent his faith from interfering with his assessment of the evidence. His views on the CA must be assessed with this in mind.

In an apparent satirical turn on Dan Brown’s “Fact” page from The Da Vinci Code, Evans begins his argument with a list of several “facts.” These include:

The problem with such declarations is that none of these are actually “facts.” They are scholarly arguments, which may or may not be convincing, but they are not “facts.” Throughout the book Evans critiques pro-CA scholars for overstating the value of the CA for recovering the Historical Jesus. His critique is valid, but he too needs to proceed with caution with this literature. The “fact” page also illustrates his penchant for citing only scholarship that supports his arguments (as if these settle the issue). This practice is misleading, particularly for his target audience of non-specialists who are led to believe that the problems surrounding the origins and meaning of these texts have been solved.

The heart of Evans’ book, as far as CA scholarship is concerned, are the two chapters on “questionable texts.” He begins the first of these chapters with the declaration that “there is nothing wrong in appealing to texts outside of the New Testament in the task of reconstructing the history of Jesus and the early church, on in the task of interpreting the New Testament writings. That is an appropriate and necessary thing to do…But it seems to me that some of these scholars are privileging the extracanonical texts, and to do this they obscure important aspects of when various texts were written” (52-54). I couldn’t agree more. Evans has worked extensively with CA texts and has demonstrated some sympathy for the literature as expressions of early Christian thought. And some scholars, primarily those interested in using the CA for the study of the Historical Jesus, do betray a certain hostility toward canonical texts and church tradition. But unjustifiably privileging canonical texts over non-canonical (i.e., privileging canonical texts simply because they are canonical) is just as problematic, and Evans is guilty of this throughout his book.

Evans gives several “questionable” CA texts significant attention. While I am not an expert in any of these particular texts, I am knowledgeable enough about them that I can see problems with Evans’ arguments. These texts are:

1. The Gospel of Thomas: Evans dates the composition of the Gospel of Thomas to ca. 175 or 180 (rather close to the date assigned to the extant Greek papyri). He does so for several reasons (see pp. 67-68): because of the gospel’s apparent awareness of many of the NT writings, because it contains Gospel materials that scholars regard as late (i.e., M, L and John), because it reproduces Matthean and Lukan redaction, and because it shows familiarity with traditions distinctive to East Syrian Christianity, which did not emerge before the middle of the second century.

The first two reasons are valid; I made a similar comment about Thomas years ago—if Thomas is independent of the canonical gospels, then its author had one hell of a library of pre-gospel texts. But I take issue with Evans’ comment that Thomas is drawing upon “late” materials (M and L are not necessarily late, and John is only late if one takes the position that its writer is aware of the canonical gospels). As for Thomas being Syrian in origin, I have yet to be convinced that this is so. The use of Thomas in Syrian texts illustrates only that the apostle was valued there, not that all traditions about him originated there (though certainly the Acts of Thomas did). In support of a Syrian origin for Thomas Evans cites the work of Nicholas Perrin (Thomas and Tatian [Academia Biblica 5; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002] and “NHC II, 2 and the Oxyrhynchus Fragments [P.Oxy 1, 654, 655]: Overlooked Evidence for a Syriac Gospel of Thomas,” VC 58 [2004]: 138-151). Perrin, he says, retrotranslated Thomas from Coptic into Greek (presumably) and then into Syriac and observed that there were more than 500 catchwords linking almost all of the sayings (p. 73). I have not read Perrin’s work (and perhaps I should resist comment) but this process of retrotranslation sounds problematic. The method works relatively well with some languages—such as Church Slavonic which is translated rather literally from the Greek and so it is often possible to determine which Greek word lies behind each Slavonic word—but to work back from Coptic, through Greek, to Syriac and believe with confidence that you can recover the original Syriac is too much of a stretch. Further, it seems relatively easy, given this method, to happen upon catchwords that may not be present.

As for evidence of redaction from the canonical gospels, Evans cites P. Oxy 654.5 and states that it matches Luke 8:17 “exactly.” First, if Thomas was originally Syriac, as Evans (agreeing with Perrin) claims, then agreement between the Greek P. Oxy. fragments and the Greek of the canonical gospels would have to stem from corruption or contamination (Evans seems here to be trying to have his cake and eat it too). Second, the “exact” correspondence between Thomas and Luke is overstated: the saying in Thomas is fragmentary with a few words supplied by the editor of the papyri (perhaps with Luke in mind) and the final element of the saying in Luke (“and come to light”) is not in Thomas; instead it is replaced with “and n[othing] buried that [will] n[ot be raised].” Even if the Thomas version matched the vocabulary of Luke “exactly”, it would only be evidence of Lukan redaction if it could be shown that such vocabulary is particularly characteristic of Luke or that it reflects Luke’s christological and/or theological interests. And there is simply too little to go on here to make such a claim.

Perrin also claims that Thomas agrees with Tatian’s Diatessaron in the order and arrangement of its sayings. It may be best to leave this argument to Diatessaron scholars but to my thinking our evidence for the Diatessaron is likely insufficient to make this claim with certainty (we have translations of the text in a variety of languages but these show evidence of Vulgatization and other forms of corruption) and I am uncertain how one can maintain that Thomas is both arranged by catchword and based on the order and arrangement of the Diatessaron.

2. The Gospel of Peter: Evans points out that the evidence we have for this text may not be witnesses to the “Gospel of Peter” from patristic testimony. The Akhmim fragment does not have a title and the P.Oxy fragments that have been assigned to Peter, and which help establish a second-century presence for the text, may not really be evidence for the gospel. In his discussion, Evans cites Serapion’s (Bishop of Antioch 199-211) knowledge of the text. Serapion associates the gospel with docetism, yet Evans rightly points out that there is no evidence of docetic thought in the extant remains of the text (though, to be fair, we do not have the complete text and it is likely that what Serapion characterizes as docetism appeared earlier in the text, perhaps in a description of Jesus’ birth).  Evans’ intent in his discussion of Peter is to cast doubt on the text’s antiquity. He concludes from Serapion’s testimony that the bishop “confirms the existence of a work known as the Gospel of Peter, a work that emerged sometime in the second century” (p. 79). Actually, Serapion only confirms that the text was in use in the late second century, not that it “emerged” at that time. Evans is correct that we must be cautious in assigning titles to fragmentary evidence but he too should be cautious not to misrepresent Serapion’s testimony.

3. Secret Mark: Evans, again, does not treat this text with requisite caution. He believes Stephen Carlson’s book on Secret Mark, The Gospel Hoax, has unequivocally proven that the text is a forgery perpetrated by Morton Smith: “the clear, recently published color photographs of the document have given experts in the science of the detection of forgeries the opportunity to analyze the handwriting of the document and compare it with samples of the handwriting of the late Professor Smith. The evidence is compelling and conclusive: Smith wrote the text” (p. 95). Evans should have cited here also the contrary position of Scott Brown, who has written several responses to Carlson’s “evidence” for forgery. In one of these articles (“Reply to Stephen Carlson,” Expository Times 117 [2006]: 144-149), Brown notes several concerns forgery experts have with handwriting comparison, including: the text to be examined should be the original document and not photographs (particularly half-tone reproductions of photographs as Carlson uses), and the sample handwriting should be of sufficient quantity to establish a person’s habitual practices (Carlson compares the handwriting of the Secret Mark manuscript to brief notes in Greek made by a certain “M. Madiotes” who Carlson believes is Morton Smith). Clearly, the identification of Secret Mark as a forgery is still open to discussion; it has not been proven, nor is it likely to be proven with the kind of certainty Evans displays. In addition, Evans misrepresents the contents of Secret Mark, perhaps to elicit shock from his audience. He states, “In the first, longer passage, Jesus raises a dead man and then later, in the nude, instructs the young man in the mysteries of the kingdom of God” (p. 95). But the text does not report that Jesus (nor the young man) is “in the nude” at all. Smith’s translation reads: “And after six days Jesus told him what to do, and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God."

The intent of this review is to draw attention to how the CA are being discussed in more conservative scholarship. Evans’ approach and arguments are representative of those of the other scholars listed at the start of the review; however, I expected Evans would be more balanced in his assessment than he is here. Evans, Witherington, et al. are right to criticize some CA scholars for drawing too hasty and too weighty conclusions about certain CA texts; if we don’t exercise appropriate caution we run the risk of our work as a whole (namely the field of the study of the CA) not being taken seriously and of having the texts we study not given the attention that we feel they deserve. It is unfortunate, however, that the apologists do not exercise the same caution in their own critiques as they ask of the scholars they target.