The 'Gnostic Gospels' or extracanonical gospels that have been popularized by Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code have become a very controversial area of scholarly debate. Some scholars believe these extracanonical gospels (not found in the Bible) actually pre-date, or at least their ideas and teachings pre-date those found in the New Testament. Evans looks at five such gospels - the gospel of Thomas, Mary, Peter, the Egerton gospel and the secret gospel of Mark. The dates of these Gnostic Gospels are all firmly placed within the second century. The gospel of Mary is dated to 160 AD, Peter 170 AD, the gospels of Egerton and Thomas 180 AD. In contrast scholars believe the New Testament Gospels were all composed in the first century - Mark is the earliest either between 50-60 AD, potentially only 20 years after the death of Jesus. Matthew and Luke were written a little later as they share similar content, which scholars believe has come from an extant source called 'Q' and were likely to have been written between 75-80 AD; and finally John was written between 90-95 AD.
The gospel of Thomas: The gospel of Thomas was found among the Nag Hammandi Codices in Egypt in 1945. The codices are believed to have been written between 350-380 AD. The codices were all written in Coptic. The teachings found in the gospel of Thomas are very esoteric in nature, in contrast to the teachings of Jesus found in the New Testament. The emphasis in the teachings of Thomas attributed to Jesus is one of knowing (Greek gnosis) rather than repentance and faith. Gnosticism places more emphasis on mysticism than on revelation. There is much evidence to suggest that the teachings found in Thomas do not pre-date the New Testament Gospels:
1. Thomas knows many of the New Testament writings 2. Thomas contains Gospel material that scholars regard as late 3. Thomas reflects later editing in the Gospels 4. Thomas shows familiarity with distinctive Eastern, Syrian Christianity that did not emerge before the middle of the Second Century. This last point is especially important to understanding how reliable the gospel is as a source of information about the historical Jesus. Syriac language specialist Nicholas Perrin has translated the gospel of Thomas into both Greek and Syriac and has found a remarkable similarity between Thomas and the Syrian Diatessaron written by Tatian, a harmonization of the 4 New Testament Gospels. The Diatessaron was the only version of the New Testament Gospel traditions known to Syrian Christianity of the second century.
The gospel of Peter: Just like in the gospel of Thomas there is evidence in the gospel of Peter of late traditions rather than earlier traditions that pre-date the New Testament Gospels. The Pharisees, priests and elders all lament after the death of Jesus and acknowledge their guilt predicting that the fall of Jerusalem was now imminent. This lacks historical-realism and is evidence of anachronistic embellishment of the later antagonism between Jews and Christians after 70 AD and the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans. The gospel also is highly inaccurate when it comes to Jewish customs as the Jewish elders camp out in the cemetery, as part of the guard keeping watch over Jesus' tomb. The fact the in Jewish custom you were ceremonially unclean and defiled for seven days because of corpse impurity not to mention their fear of graveyards at night shows great lack of familiarity and knowledge of the Jewish culture or religion of first century Israel. Further evidence of unreliability and later embellishment can be found in the mythologizing of the resurrection account, complete with talking cross and angels whose heads reach all the way to heaven. It is highly improbable that the gospel of Peter with all its inaccuracies, anachronisms and embellishment represents a more primitive, and therefore more historically reliable source of Jesus.
The secret gospel of Mark: This supposed gospel is a modern hoax. Little needs to be said here in this blog about the secret gospel of Mark other than the fact that experts in the science of the detection of forgeries have proven this gospel to be a modern hoax, most likely perpetrated by the 'discoverer' of the gospel Morton Smith, who claimed in 1960 to have found it while on sabatical in the Judean wildnerness in 1958.
Moving away from the scrutiny of the historicity of the Gnostic/extracanonical gospels, the latter part of 'Fabricating Jesus' deals with the issue of pseudo-history and archeology and the rise in popular literature of authors claiming to have discovered the real historical Jesus through decyphering codes and uncovering conspiracies. In 1982 Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln published 'The Holy blood and the Holy Grail', which claimed that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene, had children by her who relocated to France and later married into noble French families. The Knights Templar and the Priory of Sion, a secret society founded in 1099 knew this and were charged with keeping this fact secret. The whole thing was discovered to be a hoax created by Pierre Plantard and his friends, who later admitted to it under oath in a French court of Law leading to Plantard's imprisonment for Fraud.
It is this book and their other work the Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (another fictitious work, which was disproven by the very Dead Sea Scrolls in question) that inspired Dan Brown to write the Da Vinci Code, who Baigent and Leigh sued for theft of intellectual property. There are also many errors when it comes to Church history and the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the Da Vinci Code, which prove lack of historical scholarship or research, such as the content, origin and date of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Emperor Constantine, the language of the gospel of Philip and the nature of the Coptic codices. I want to finish this blog by quoting Evan's conclusion to what he calls 'hokum history':
Common to this hokum history and these bogus findings are eccentric approaches that competent, trained, historians find utterly implausible. Legends, rumours, forged documents, hoaxes and pyschic intuition hardly constitute the stuff from which sober historical truth will be found...They are not based on credible evidence; they do not follow recognized standards of critical investigation; and they do not offer anything approaching genuine history. (Evans, p. 221, 2007)
Contrary to many people's cynicism and skepticism, rigorous critical criteria for assessment is used when assessing ancient manuscripts, documents and codices relating to antiquity. The Criteria for Authenticity used by New Testament scholars are as follows: 1. Historical Coherence, 2. Multiple Attestation, 3. Embarressment, 4. Dissimilarity, 5. Semitism and Palestinian background and 6. Coherence (or consistency). For further information on this criteria I recommend you read Evan's book 'Fabricating Jesus' for yourself and learn how the extracanonical works mentioned in the book fail under closer examination and scrutiny.
'Fabricating Jesus' deftly and eruditely dispells many myths regarding contemporary Jesus research and exposes the agendas and special pleading of many very liberal and skeptical New Testament scholars. Jesus is not just a myth with which we have the right, intellectually or spiritually to create in our own image, for the satisfaction of our own imagination. Once you ignore and reject the canonical Gospels you find yourself in a land of inaccuracy, anachronism, fantasy and myth. The Jesus of the Gospels and the historical Jesus are one and the same; they are synonymous and interchangeable.
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