As mentioned in a previous post, I am teaching a course this semester on the New Testament Apocrypha (while I prefer “Christian Apocrypha,” NTA has more brand-name recognition). I’m hoping to integrate our discussions in class into blog postings on Apocryphicity in order to encourage participation from the students (thus killing two birds with one stone).

Our first lecture of the term took place Wednesday night (Sept. 19). We began with a discussion of canon formation and the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy. I assigned readings on canon lists and the first chapter of Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. In all of my recent reading of conservative, anti-Apocrypha apologetic, I have found that, while some take issue with Bauer and his successors (Koester, Ehrman, etc.), no-one denies the fundamental accuracy of his chapter on Edessa.

For those who have not read Bauer, it is the author’s claim that, despite the legend reported by Eusebius that Christianity came to Edessa in the first century as the result of a correspondence between a certain King Abgar and Jesus, the earliest forms of Christianity in Edessa was Marcionite (followed soon by Bar Daisan who championed the use of Tatian’s Diatessaron over Marcion’s gospel). Orthodoxy was slow to take root in Edessa, leading to the orthodox group being christened “Palutians” after the name of their bishop Palut—the title of “Christianity” was given to the region’s first Christians: the Marcionites. Helmut Koester, in a 1965 article, augmented Bauer’s theory in light of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library. Koester claimed the first form of Christianity in Edessa was that of the “Thomas group” reflected in the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas, and the Acts of Thomas. Regardless of which heretical group was there first, “orthodox” Christianity was not normative in Edessa until at least the fourth century.

Bauer’s work is helpful for making the point that the labels of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” depend on one’s perspective. The acrobatics that Bauer must perform to make this point are impressive; he must examine several sources for Christianity in the area and determine that many of them have been invented (including the Abgar correspondence, the Doctrina Addai, and 3 Corinthians) or interpolated (sections of the Edessene Chronicle) by later orthodox Christians (the production of Apocrypha is not limited to so-called heretics). If accurate, Bauer shows that orthodox Christians are quite effective at rewriting history to buttress their claim that in all places Christianity began as orthodoxy and was later corrupted by heretics. Though they accede that Bauer is correct about Edessa, conservative writers do not want to accede that Christianity could have developed similarly in other places. Certainly we should be careful not to make arguments from silence, but it is possible that the evidence is simply lost to us. Bauer also illustrates the need to treat orthodox claims about their origins with suspicion; as he states regarding the orthodoxy portrayal of Christian history: “I do not mean to say that this point of view must be false, but neither can I regard it as self-evident, or even as demonstrated and clearly established” (p. xxiv).

Bauer’s statement is a manifesto that can be (and should be) applied universally—i.e., throughout one’s university education and beyond. If students learn nothing else from this course but that one sentence, I’ll be happy.

The latest Review of BIblical Literature features a review of Craig Evans's apologetic work  Fabricating Jesus (previously discussed HERE) by Stephen Patterson. Patterson has pubished widely on the Gospel of Thomas; but, unlike my own review of the book, Patterson's review devotes little space to Evans's approach to the CA. It focuses instead on Evans's approach to the canonical gospels and to the scholars wth which Evans's takes issue. Here is an excerpt from the review:

After spending an unpleasant week with this book, it is all too tempting to let Evans’s own words come back to haunt him: “I am appalled at much of this work. Some of it, frankly, is embarrassing.” But this would not do. My real difference with Evans is that I do not share his evangelical stipulations about the text. This is a divide that we must increasingly deal with in biblical studies. Competently trained scholars now operate on both sides of this great divide. How we handle that difference honestly and respectfully is our unique challenge. On that score this book fails miserably and can best serve as a counterexample of how not to engage one’s colleagues in discussion and debate.