Forgotten Christianities: Recent Episodes
Andre Smuts
We take a fascinating look at these early forms of Christianity and how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. All of these groups insisted that they upheld the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and they all possessed writings that bore out their claims, books reputedly produced by Jesus's own followers. Modern archaeological work has recovered a number of key texts, these spectacular discoveries reveal religious diversity that says much about the ways in which history gets written by the winners.
Christians of the second and third centuries held a remarkably wide range of beliefs. Although some of these beliefs may sound ludicrous today, at the time, they seemed not only sensible but right. Some Christians maintained that there were two Gods, or twelve, or thirty, or more. Some Christians claimed that Jesus was not really a human being, or that he was not really divine, or that he was two different beings, one human and one divine. Some Christians believed that this world was not created by the true God but by a malicious deity as a place for punishment for human souls, which had become entrapped here in human bodies. Some Christians believed that Jesus’ death and resurrection had no bearing on salvation, and some Christians believed that Jesus had never actually died.
Modern Christianity is widely diverse, in terms of its social structures, beliefs, and practices. But this diversity is mild in comparison with Christianity during the ¿ rst three centuries.
Jewish Christian Adoptionists, unlike other Christian groups … maintained that Jesus was not himself a divine being, but that he was a human being that had been adopted by God to be His son.
Marcionites [were] a group of “heretics” that stood diametrically opposed to the Ebionites.
In some ways, it is best to consider the gnostic religions as attempts to explain and account for the state of things in this world, how the human race got here, how the material world came into being, how it relates to the realm of God, and how humans can achieve their ultimate salvation.
The title of this gospel comes from the opening line which says, “The Gospel of Truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of Truth the grace of knowing Him, through the power of the word that came forth from the Pleroma,”
Let’s see how two different gnostic teachers tried to convince friendly non-gnostic Christians of their understanding of important aspects of their faith. Both the documents were addressed to proto-orthodox Christians who were, however, genuinely interested in key aspects of the gnostic point of view.
Because of the importance of this text, I have decided to devote two separate lectures to it.
Many of these sayings presuppose that the material world is an evil place in which human souls are imprisoned and from which they need to be freed. Jesus provides the knowledge that can bring this salvation.
The gospels of the New Testament say very little about events surrounding Jesus’ life as an infant and young boy (just a couple of stories, such as the visit of the magi in Matthew and Jesus as a twelve year-old in the Temple in Luke). This “lost period” from Jesus’ life is the subject of several early gospels, however, including (a) the ProtoGospel of James, a narrative of the miraculous birth and holy life of Jesus’ mother, Mary, leading up to Jesus’ own supernatural appearance in the world and (b) the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a series of stories of Jesus as a miracle-working but mischievous boy, starting when he was age five.
One of the most remarkable gospels from antiquity comes to us in only a fragment, discovered near the end of the nineteenth century in a monk’s tomb. This is all that remains of the gospel allegedly written by Jesus’ disciple Peter.
One of the most controversial “discoveries” of modern times occurred in 1958 at the Mar Saba library near Jerusalem, when Morton Smith came upon the fragment of a letter, which indicates there existed a second edition of Mark’s gospel.
To some extent, the the major surviving accounts of the apostles are modeled on the Book of Acts in the New Testament, but they differ in that each is concerned principally about just one of the major apostles in early Christendom: John, Peter, Paul, Andrew, and Thomas.
The Apocryphal Acts, a Christian genre written … about the exploits of the apostles, utilize many of the same characteristics of the romance genre and many of the same concerns.
The principal reason that Christians forged documents in antiquity: They wanted their views heard, and they wanted their views to be accepted as authoritative, and so they wrote down their views in the names of apostles.
A number of letters survive from Christian antiquity that claim to be written by the apostle Paul but that were, in fact, clearly fabricated at a later time
The Epistle of Barnabas was widely considered to be Scripture in some circles of early Christianity, and it nearly made its way into the New Testament.
The apocalypse genre originally emerged in Jewish circles, and is closely connected with the Jewish world view known as apocalypticism.
It's striking that, despite the fact that there’s such a range of Christian beliefs that there was, in the end, only one that emerged as victorious.
People in the ancient world recognized the need for religion, because they knew that they themselves, as mere mortals, were not able to control the forces of life that could harm them.
Contrary to what many people may imagine, the canon of the New Testament did not emerge at the very beginning of the Christian movement.
Accepting a book is not the same thing as interpreting a book, and as early Christians recognized, there were numerous ways to interpret the books of Scripture
Early Christian disputes involved not merely knowing how to interpret the words of Scripture, but even knowing what the words actually were.
The struggles to establish orthodoxy … involved issues of the canon, which books should be included; the clergy, who should be in charge; and the creed, what should be believed