Speculum et Lavacrum

The Missing Scriptures

Bahnsen gives three basic tests to use when evaluating a proposition. First, consistency, is the proposition given consistent with itself? Second, arbitrariness/conjecture, is the proposition based on a premise or is it based on an unwarranted presupposition? In philosophy, Reductio ad absurdum, and in logic, the sliding slope fallacy (these are functionally the same), what are the logical consequences when the pro

position is carried out consistently (the redefinition of marriage is guilty of this)? Do they lead you to the absurd or contradiction? Then moving from the particulars to the universals, the worldview that is under girding the proposition consistent within itself? Does it cohere with reality? And is it existentially viable?

But then again, for those of you who are familiar with Van Til, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, Frame, and the like will recognize something here. One must be standing on a Christian foundation in order to even ask these questions. For we are assuming that the universe is uniform at its most basic foundation, which cannot be explained by Post-Modernism which by definition is anti-foundational.

What are The Missing Scriptures? These are texts that have now been found that before they were lost, we actually knew a lot about. For example, Irenaeus, a church father from the second century, wrote against these primarily Gnostic texts in his work called “Against Heresies”. But, in 1945 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt 52 texts were uncovered. Many of which were “gospels” or works that dealt with the life and ministry of Jesus in one w

ay or another. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, as they are now called, created quite the stir when they were published. Starting in the late 1970's Elaine Pagels published a book called “The Gnostic Gospels”. And this was the beginning of a flood of information that was brought into the public square.

First off, titling these texts “The Missing Scriptures” is a prejudicial conjecture in itself. It, from the start, implies that we're missing something. When the fact of it is, many of the texts have been known about since the 2^nd and 3^rd Century. Also, such books as The Shepherd of Hermes, Didache, 1^st and 2^nd Clement were considered orthodox in the early church and were read, but were not canonized. So, the title, “Missing Scriptures” is misleading, therefore I will be referring to the herterodoxical texts as merely, “The Gnostic Texts”.

Define Gnosticism: Gnosticism comes from the Greek word “gnosis” which means “knowledge”. There are many varying forms of Gnosticism. Gnosticism wasn't an organized religion like Christianity. There was a pagan Gnosticism that had no Christian elements in it. There was a “Christian Gnosticism” which was derived from Christianity. So it is very difficult to define. But basically Gnostic Christianity was basically a combination of Greek philosophy and Christian symbolism (similarly to what we see in the Emergent Church today). Gnostic Christianity emphasized a dualism, specifically that ideas and the spirit were good and all matter was corrupt. It had a creation story which one of the underling gods were responsible and basically screwed up. Some versions of the Creation story involve what is called “the divine feminine” usually by the name of Sophia. These Gnostic texts deny a physical resurrection, on the contrary to the Da Vinci Code, they posit a Jesus who is completely “god” and not human.

A commitment to their presupposition that there is no personal God, therefore the Bible can be nothing more than just literature, has created a

profound inconsistency that these Scholars are guilty of. Just more liberal historical revisionism, at the root they are trying to push the date of these texts as far back as they possibly can and date the N.T. Texts as late as they can. therefore, creating a hodge-podge pluralism of multiple Christianities. These alternative Christianities deserve to have an equal hearing to what we call orthodoxy. And what this does is create a skepticism which asks, why can't these other texts give us a better explanation of who Jesus was? How to gain salvation, our origination, meaning, etc. And then based upon this new context of early Christianities they interpret the New Testament text. Thus, making our New Testament as viable as the others. The problem is, is that we don't have enough information about the formulation of Gnosticism to come to anything as conclusive as these scholars say we can. Its a lot of conjectural work on their part. But what we do know, is that this full formed Gnosticism is much later than the New Testament.

When one realizes that the problem with their hermeneutic is that they assume that the missing gospel texts are as valid as the New Testament and vis versa. And that there is no God who is there and has spoken, it makes sorting out the issues clearer, not easier, but clearer. This is why I believe we as Christians have to cultivate a discernment that can recognize the underlying philosophical presuppositional commitments of the unregenerate.

The missing gospel MSS tradition vs. N.T. Textual tradition. Scholars are very inconsistent on this point. If we can't know what the originals of the N.T. are, how is it even remotely possible that we can trust in, less than a handful of Gnostic MSS? What if the Gospel of Judas was corrupted? How about the Gospel of Thomas? If we have such a vast range of MSS for the New Testament, and we see that the scribes couldn't get it right with the kind of resources that were available to them. Why should we give any amount of credence to these? Why should we even consider interpreting the N.T. in the light of these texts when the N.T. is the best attested book in all of antiquity?

When comparing the Gnostic texts with the Old and New Testament we see a very clear line of distinction. There is no continuity between the Old Testament and the Gnostic texts. But there is an amazing amount of continuity between the 27 books of the New Testament and the Old. The Gnostic texts are also, completely antithetical from a systematical standpoint. Gnosticism is polytheistic and the N.T. is monotheistic. Beyond, the reliability of the New Testament which we looked at last time, I mentioned earlier that Gnosticism wasn't an organized religion, this is important. But one aspect that we didn't have time to look into, is the oral tradition, the memory in community of the New Testament in conjuncti

on with the written tradition contained within the body of believers and the role of the eye witnesses. We see a body of texts in the N.T. that are set in history, and coherent within the body of believers in the early church. But when we set this against the Gnostic texts, these texts are primarily esoteric teachings that were delivered secretly to one individual, and only some of the followers of Christ will attain to this true gnosis. Not even the apostles reached this state of enlightenment. This shows us that they are lacking any kind of historicity. The best way to describe the Gnostic texts, if I may borrow the liberals terminology, a historical revision of Christianity.

I'm going to give a basic summary of some of these Gnostic texts and notice the differences between them and the Bible

The Coptic Gospel of Thomas, one of the Nag Hammadi texts, which has 114 sayings of Jesus. You'll find that 25 percent of it sounds very familiar because its very much like the Synoptics and John, you have the parable of the mustard seed, saying like, blessed is the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, or the saying, if a blind man l

eads another blind man they both fall into a pit. Another 25 percent of it is sort of like the Synoptics and John. And then another 50% of it, you read and think, this is weird, because its not at all like the Synoptics and John. Such as, “If the flesh came into being because of Spirit its a wonder, but is spirit came into being because of the body, its a wonder of wonders. Indeed I am amazed at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty.” Or how about, “Jesus said, who has ever come to understand the world has found only a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse, is superior to this world.” This is very gnostic as it teaches that whoever finds that this world is a corpse then they have reached true gnosis and are saved, and there are several more like these sayings.

Thomas clearly has some of its origin in the traditions of the church. Some of it, obviously doesn't come from the Synoptics and John. In the end this is why this book was not read in the early church. Even Origin, from the early 3^rd century, when listing the Gospels that we don't read in the Churches because they are not recognized, he mentioned the Gospel of Thomas by name. In one section of the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “I am the all, split a piece of wood and I am there, lift up a stone and I am there.”

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, this is one of the earlier gospels that we have outside of the four Gospels in the N.T. This book is called an infancy gospel because deals with a time in Jesus' life that the canonical gospels are virtually silent about, namely his young life. The Synoptics and John do not talk much at all about Jesus' young life. In this book, Jesus had all the power that he did as an adult but as a young boy had a mischievous streak in him. He used this power sometimes in order to hurt those who bugged him.

The gospel starts out with Jesus as a five year old boy. In the first episode, we're told that Jesus was playing by the ford of a stream, and he gathers into a pool the waters that are rushing through the stream. He then orders these waters to become pure, and they're cleansed immediately. Jesus then takes some mud beside the stream, and he forms twelve sparrows. Unfortunately it was the Sabbath when he did this and a Jewish man walks by and sees what Jesus has done. Jesus has done work on the Sabbath. So the man goes o

ff to tell Joseph, Jesus' father, and reports to him, “look! Your child at the stream has taken mud and formed twelve sparrows. He's profaned the Sabbath.” When Joseph came to the place and saw what had happened, he cried out to Jesus, “why are you doing what is forbidden on the Sabbath.” but Jesus clapped his hands and cried to the sparrows, “be gone!” And the sparrows took flight and went off chirping. Thus, Jesus has destroyed all evidence of his wrong doing.

Jesus is playing with another little boy by the pool. The son of Anis the Scribe, takes a willow branch and scatters the water that Jesus has collected into this pool. Jesus is irritated with him after seeing him do this, and says to him (five years old), “You unrighteous, irreverent idiot! What did the pools of water do to harm you? See now you also will be withered like a tree, and you will never bear leaves, or root, or fruit!” And immediately that child was completely withered. Jesus left and returned home, but the parents of the withered child carried him away, mourning his lost youth, they brought him to Joseph and began to accuse him, “What kind of child do you have who does such things?”

On another occasion another kid is running through the street, and he runs up to Jesus and he bangs him on his shoulder. This also irritates Jesus, and Jesus turns to him and says, “You'll go no further on your way!” The child falls down dead.

At some point the parents in the village get upset, especially with Joseph and Mary for having a kid like this who is out of control, so they urge them to do something. Joseph decides, well what we need to do is to give the boy an education (this is the Gnostic element to the book). So Joseph and Mary send Jesus off to a teacher. This teacher knows about Jesus' reputation so he's a little bit nervous. So he decides, first I'll teach him Greek and then I'll teach him Hebrew. So he goes to teach him how to read, first he needs to learn the alphabet. So he says, “ok Jesus repeat after me, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon. Repeat after me, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon.” Jesus doesn't say anything, and the teacher gets upset, and asks, “Jesus why don't you reply?” Jesus says to him, “You tell me the power of alpha and I'll tell you the power of beta,” the teacher thinks this is a smart aleck reply, smacks him upside the h

ead. Jesus withers him on the spot.

Another instance, Jesus is playing with a bunch of kids on top of a roof. One of the kids trips and falls off the roof and lands on the ground and dies. The other children see this and are frightened and run off. But Jesus goes over to the edge of the roof and looks down and sees the dead boy there. Just then, of course, the dead child's parents come up and they see their dead child, Zenon, and they see Jesus on the roof and think, he's at it again, so they start accusing Jesus. So Jesus leaps off of the roof, lands next to the dead child and yells, “Zenon, rise up, tell me, did I throw you down?” Zenon rises from the dead and says, “No Lord, you did not throw me down, you have raised me up.” From then on, Jesus starts using his powers for the good. He heals those that he has withered, he gives sight back to those that he has blinded, he raises those that have died. The Gospel of Thomas ends with Jesus arguing in the temple with the teachers of the law, the story that we have in Luke 2. (Summary taken from Dr. Bart Ehrman, The Other Gospels)

The Gospel of Judas, creation is the task of a thir

d level underling god. He messes up and then god has to go about the process of recovering what has been done. And the way he does it is he puts this divine spark/ spirit in people and the only thing that lives, in the redemption process is this divine spark. There is no concept of sin, no concept of even responsibility. It also presents a Jesus who laughs frequently at the foolishness of his disciples, that is except Judas.

The Gospel of Peter, this gospel comes to us in a fragment, it is not complete. But it was found in a tomb with a dead monk. It begins in the middle of a sentence and ends in the middle of a sentence. It begins in the middle of the passion narrative where Jesus is on trial. It then goes on to give an account of the resurrection. But during the crucifixion, it says that Jesus was silent as if he had no pain. An early church father noted that this book had a docetic Christology. He wasn't really human, he only appeared to be human. This is very Gnostic. The part where this is really evident is its account of the resurrection. There was a guard posted at the tomb of Roman Soldiers. Right before dawn, the skies open up and two angelic beings descend from heaven, and as they descend, the stone in front of the tomb rolls away by itself. The two angels go into the tomb. Then there comes out of the tomb, three people, two of them supporting the other, with a cross following behind them. So the three of them walk out and

a cross emerges behind them. The heads of the two supporting the other reached up to the sky but the head of the one they were leading, went up above the skies. They heard a voice from the skies, “have you preached to those who are asleep.” and the cross replied, “Yes”.

The Apocalypse of Peter, Peter has a vision of the crucifixion scene, and he sees a figure laughing in heaven while the crucifixion is taking place. So Peter asks Jesus about this, and Jesus' response is, “what's going on is, is that the spirit that occupied Jesus' body departed before the crucifixion. And it was actually the substitute that was crucified.” Meanwhile, Jesus is laughing in heaven because he has tricked them. They think they're crucifying Him but in fact, they haven't. The spirit of Jesus occupies a body but there is no true incarnation.

If society wants us to accept these other tex

ts, then they're going to have a huge problem, as these texts present an exclusively deified Jesus than the Synoptics and John. But I am sure they have their reasons why they still won't worship him.

A central element to this whole topic is the issue of the Canonization of Scripture, to which I will be discussing next week. The New Perspective on Paul is very important, but its too complex for a 30-45 minute lecture.