Apocryphicity

I have been working recently on an introduction to a book on the Christian Apocrypha aimed at a popular audience. The introduction contains a short autobiographical section on what attracted me to study the Christian Apocrypha. I thought it might be of some interest to readers of Apocryphicity.

Why am I such an advocate for the Christian Apocrypha? Have I been “burned…by orthodox Christianity” as Ben Witherington suggests (in The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci [Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2004], p. 172-174, and What Have They Done With Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History—Why We Can Trust the Bible [San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006], p. 4-5)? Am I trying to prove I am a “good critical scholar” by “discrediting” the New Testament? Or have I been “misled…by the powers of darkness”? I hope the answer to all of these questions is no. But the answer is connected to faith—or more rightly, a reaction to a faith once held.

I grew up in England in a Roman Catholic home, though my family was not particularly devout. My father was greatly interested in religious questions—Who was Jesus? What happens when we die? Did Marian apparitions truly occur? When will the apocalypse happen?—but not overly concerned with religious practice; indeed, we rarely attended church. But I did believe. I believed the gospels were written by the apostles of Jesus, I believed I had to be good if I wanted to avoid eternal damnation, and I …

In this final post of my critique of Andreas J. Köstenberger’s and Michael J. Kruger’s The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2010) I focus on K&K’s chapter on the Christian Apocrypha: “Establishing the Boundaries: Apocryphal Books and the Limits of Canon.” 

This chapter asks the question, “whether the diversity of apocryphal literature threatens the integrity of the twenty-seven-book canon as we know it” (152). Again, K&K are challenging the pop-scholarship of Bart Ehrman which asserts that all Christian texts, canonical and non-canonical, are equal, that some apocryphal texts could easily have made it into the canon.  K&K justifiably, I think, criticize Ehrman for a statement he makes in Lost Christianities in this regard: “But where did [the New Testament] come from? It came from the victory of the proto-orthodox. What if another group had won? What if the New Testament contained not Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount but the Gnostic teachings Jesus delivered to his disciples after his resurrection? What if it contained not the letters of Paul and Peter but the letters of Ptolemy and Barnabas? What if it contained not the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John but the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, Mary, and Nicodemus?” (Ehrman, p. 248). Ehrman’s point is sound, that the New Testament represents the views of one particular group (or several likeminded groups) in early Christianity; whether or not they are a group with greater claims of …

I resume my critique of the Andreas J. Köstenberger’s and Michael J. Kruger’s The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2010) with the final chapter of the first section of the book: “Heresy in the New Testament: How Early Was It?” The chapter essentially minimizes the observable differences between various texts within the NT and among early Christian leaders (Peter, Paul, James). I am not going to argue with K&K much on this topic, except to say that the interpretation of the evidence depends on one’s presuppositions, for the most part, about the book of Acts. Early in their discussion, they say, “Assuming the historical accuracy of Luke’s account…” (p. 75). Doing so leads to an opinion of the early church and its leadership as harmonious and united. My own view is that Acts is a relatively late text (80 CE at the earliest but possibly even later) that has little interest in an accurate portrayal of the early history of the church. Acts minimizes the conflicts that we see more transparently in Paul’s letters; thus, one who considers Acts reliable will be inclined also to minimize these conflicts.

However, my primary objection to this chapter is with the assumptions K&K attribute to proponents of the Bauer-Ehrman thesis. They complain strongly about the “anti-supernatural bias in Bauer’s historical method” (102). “What we are arguing,” they write, “is that the Bauer-Ehrman thesis is wrong not just because these …

This is the second in a series of posts on Andreas J. Köstenberger’s and Michael J. Kruger’s recent book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2010). Since the first post, I have come across two other on-line responses to the book from Tim Henderson (at Earliest Christianity) and from Michael Bird (at Euangelion).

The first part of The Heresy of Orthodoxy deals heavily with the Bauer thesis and it’s most vocal and visible recent defender Bart Ehrman. The first chapter outlines the thesis in a fairly neutral fashion, save for the occasional remark about how it has led to a championing of diversity in today’s age. The authors also mention some of Bauer’s critics and supporters.

The second chapter, “Unity and Plurality: How Diverse was Early Christianity?”, explicitly challenges the Bauer thesis.  Bauer examined five urban centres and made the argument that heresy preceded orthodoxy in these areas.  K&K’s criticisms are valid at times; indeed, we have a lot more information about heretical groups (thanks largely to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library) than Bauer had in his time, and we also have more nuanced views about what constituted “Gnosticism” in the early centuries. So, for several of these urban centres, Bauer’s arguments are now unsustainable; particularly because, as K&K note, Bauer neglects much of the first-century evidence for some of these areas. However, he does so with reason: “the New …

This is the first in a series of posts on Andreas J. Köstenberger's and Michael J. Kruger’s recent book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2010). It is one of a number of books written in reaction to works by scholars (particularly Bart Ehrman) associated with the “Bauer school”—i.e., influenced by Walter Bauer’s landmark book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum, originally published in 1934). I suppose that I, too, would be considered a member of this “school”; so, I am very interested in critiques of Bauer’s work and those who have followed in his footsteps. Also, I have written previously, both here and in print, on examples of what I have called anti-Christian Apocrypha apologetic. And K&K’s book certainly falls into that category.

First, a basic description of the book. Like previous works of this kind, it is published by a press known for fairly conservative (or simply theological) books: Crossway. The testimonials filling the opening pages are all by conservative writers, several of whom have written books very much like this one (e.g., Darrell Bock, Dan Wallace). The forward by Howard I. Marshall seems to anticipate any criticisms of the authors’ theological perspective: “The authors write as adherents of what would probably be identified as an evangelical Christianity that maintains a belief in the divine inspiration of Scripture, but, so far as I can see, their …

Darrell Bock, author of The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the truth Behind Alternative Christianities (2006), has a new book out this month entitled Recovering the Real Lost Gospel: Reclaiming the Gospel as Good News (you can read the promotional blurb HERE). Bock is one of several evangelical scholars who have written some critical, though largely uninformed, indictments of the Christian Apocrypha and the scholars who study it. To read more about their literary endeavours, click HERE.