WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER GOSPELS?

WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER GOSPELS?

Brett Todd

Scholars have long known there were other Gospels other than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  The early Church Father, Origen (ca. 184-252) knew this as well, he states, “Now, in the New Testament also, ‘many have tried’ to write gospels, but not all have found acceptance.  You should know that not only four Gospels, but very many, were composed.” 

What really opened scholars’ eyes to the existence of other Gospels was the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 along the Nile River in Egypt.  In this collection, there are 12 volumes (codices) with  48 individual titles.  A few of these volumes are gospels, and one of them is the celebrated “Gospel of Thomas” which contains 114 sayings of Jesus.

Here are a few examples of the 114 sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. I’m using the Thomas O. Lambdin translation:

(1) And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."

(2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."

(31) Jesus said, "No prophet is accepted in his own village; no physician heals those who know him." 

As you can see, there are some similarities between the Gospel of Thomas and the four gospels in the Bible.  However, there are also sayings that might raise your eyebrow, here is one example:

(114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."

Though the Nag Hammadi library is classified as Gnostic writings [the belief that knowledge is necessary for salvation], they are still Christian Gospels and Letters.  In fact, the Gospel of Thomas, with its 114 sayings of Jesus is readily used by New Testament scholars today to help in the discovery of the “authentic” sayings of Jesus in the four Gospels of the New Testament.

What we learn from these extra books, not found in the Christian Bible, is this: Early Christianity was quite diverse.  They believed in a lot of things just like Christianity today.  There was not one truth for all Christians.  This is also true, as we shall discover, when we look at the Christian Bible, the authors of the New Testament had different stories, beliefs, and perspectives.  We will take a look at this in our next study.

ONCE LOST BUT NOW FOUND

ONCE LOST BUT NOW FOUND

Brett Todd

There is a Bible story that many scholars believe was once lost and hundreds of years later, found again.  It is one of the most beloved stories in the Bible, “The Woman Caught in Adultery” (John 7:53; 8:1-11).  As the story goes, a woman was caught (trapped) in the very act of adultery with a man.  So the religious leaders bring her to Jesus to see if they could trap Jesus into saying something contrary to the Law. But Jesus in his wisdom writes in the sand and tells the religious leaders, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  It is a beautiful and captivating story.

Although this story is found in the Gospel of John, scholars agree, John didn’t write it.  It doesn’t belong in the Gospel of John. In fact, you cannot find it in any New Testament Greek manuscript prior to the end of the 5th-century.  This is hundreds of years after Jesus' death. There are possible hints of its existence from early Church Fathers, but no written manuscripts.  Additionally, it is apparent, the scribes who added this story to the Greek New Testament manuscripts, were not sure where to put it.  So, what they did is put it in several different locations in different manuscripts in the Gospel of John.  To be exact, when we look at these Greek manuscripts, we find this particular story in eleven different locations in the Gospel of John.  One scribe even put it in between the Gospel of Luke and John.

You might have even noticed in your Bible the double bracket [[  ]] around this story.  This indicates that this story is not in the oldest New Testament Greek manuscripts.  

With all of the above mentioned, we might ask, why did modern Scholars leave this story in the Bible if it wasn’t there in the first place?  Remember, the story was added to the New Testament hundreds of years later and scribes were not sure where to put the story in the Bible.  So why was it included in the Bible?   The answer is interesting. As scholars, not all, looked at this ancient story of “The Woman Caught in Adultery”, they agreed it had all the earmarkings of a historical Jesus story. 

You might ask, where did this story come from?  Scholars are pretty certain this is one of those once lost but now found authentic memory stories that were floating around for hundreds of years unattached to any written document.  It was a Jesus memory story passed down from one Christian to another by word of mouth until it found its way into the Gospel of John as we know it.

Again, it is important to understand not all of the memory stories of Jesus were passed down.  Many of them were not included in the Gospels because of time and space and were subsequently lost forever.  Possibly the author of the Gospel of John was referring to this when he said, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25). There were so many Jesus memory stories that authors of the Gospels had to pick and choose which ones to share.  Those that were not used were lost forever in time.

In our next study, we will look at some other Gospels you may have not heard of and the diversity they brought to early Christianity?

MEMORIES AND STORIES CAN BE SHORTENED AND EVEN LOST FOREVER

 

MEMORIES AND STORIES CAN BE SHORTENED AND EVEN LOST FOREVER

Brett A. Todd

Just as memory stories and letters in the Bible can be added to, so can they be shortened, removed, and even lost forever.

As we mentioned previously, Matthew and Luke used Mark to write their Gospels, and in the process, they added a lot to the story told by Mark.  However, there were times when these two Gospels shortened Mark’s stories. One example of Matthew and Luke doing just this is in the story of “The Cleansing of the Temple.”  Mark uses close to 90 English words (Mark 11:15-17), whereas Matthew (21:12-13) uses 60, and Luke (19:45-46) uses less than 40 words.  This is a significant reduction to Mark’s story.

Not only did Matthew and Luke shorten Mark’s story of “The Cleansing of the Temple,” but they also removed the author of Mark’s comment, “and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the Temple.” (Mark 11:16) probably because they thought such a feat was impossible.  Remember, the Temple yard consists of over 30 acres and there were 13 entries (gates) in which people were coming and going.  How is one man going to stop people from coming and going, as well as carry on their religious duties?  It would be an impossible feat and so both Matthew and Luke opted out of including Mark’s words, in verse 16, from their own Gospels. As you see, not only do Matthew and Luke lengthen the stories of Mark, but in some cases, they shorten them for various reasons.

Some are surprised when they discover that not only did the Apostle Paul write two letters to the Corinthians, but he wrote three.  Yes, you read correctly, Paul wrote three letters and not just two to the Corinthians.  

How do we know this? Paul mentioned this third letter in 2 Corinthians 7:8. This is what he said, "For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it (though I did regret it, for I see that I grieved you with that letter, though only briefly)." Scholars believe this letter that grieved them was the third letter. But where is this third letter? We don't know. It got lost and probably forever.

It should not surprise us at all if a letter of Paul’s got lost in the shuffle of life.  My guess is that Paul wrote several letters of which we have no account.  It happens all the time, even in modern history.  We know there was once a classic by William Shakespeare called, “Cardenio,” but it is lost forever. How about Ernest Hemingway’s World War I novel?  Yes, it too is lost forever.  Stories and letters get lost and many times lost forever.  Who knows, maybe down the road someone will find one of these lost letters.  The chances of this ever happening are quite slim to nil, but possible. 

In our next study, we will look at one Bible story that was lost and hundreds of years later found again: ONCE LOST BUT NOW FOUND.

Memories And Stories Are Often Expanded

Memories And Stories Are Often Expanded

Brett A. Todd

Memories and stories are often expanded. They get bigger and bigger, longer and longer.

There is a joke going around you have probably heard.  A widow with her son is sitting in the church listening to the preacher’s homily about her deceased husband, who wasn’t a very nice man.  The preacher’s accolades were beautiful, but quite a stretch of the real man’s character.  So, the widow turned to her little boy and said, “Get up and look into the casket and see if that’s your dad in there.”  Yes, funeral homilies can be inflated and get bigger and bigger, longer and longer.

This is also true of Bible stories whether these memory stories are historical accounts, parables, or legends, they all tend to grow.  It is kind of like the fish you caught when you were a young boy or girl.  The fish gets bigger and bigger each time you tell the story.  

To illustrate this, you must first keep in mind that Mark was the first gospel written and that Matthew and Luke copied Mark and added to Mark’s story. With this in mind, note the following word count of each gospel.  Mark has close to 15,000 English words, whereas Matthew has 23,000 plus words, and Luke has 25,500 words.  The fish gets bigger and bigger.  Both Matthew and Luke have several thousand more words than the Gospel of Mark.  Now, there are several reasons, which we will discuss later, why both Matthew and Luke are longer than Mark, but my point here is that these memories and stories often grow and get bigger and longer.

Let me give you an example of how these stories get longer.  In the familiar story of “The Temptation of Jesus” in Matthew and Mark (Matthew 4:1-11 and Mark 1:12-13), Mark uses about 30 words while Matthew uses around 300 words.  Mark simply says, “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.”  Matthew, on the other hand,  adding to Mark’s story has much more to say.  He lists in detail the clash between Jesus and Satan. With each temptation, Jesus gains an upper hand by countering Satan with authoritative words from the Hebrew Scriptures.  Once again, memories and stories are often expanded.  They get bigger and bigger, longer and longer.

“The Resurrection Story of Jesus” is another story that gets bigger and bigger, longer and longer (Mark 16:1-8).  Here, a scribe tacked on more verses at the end of Mark’s resurrection story.  Your Bible may even have a note saying something like this, “Earliest manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20”.  Most Bible scholars believe these verses were added to the Gospel of Mark because some ancient scribe didn’t like the way Mark ended his story: “...and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). So the scribe added eleven more verses to Mark to make it end on a more positive note.

Just as stories and letters in the Bible can get bigger and bigger, longer and longer, so can they be shortened or even removed?  In our next study, we will talk about these memories, stories, and Bible letters that have been shortened, removed and sometimes lost forever.