What About the Missing Gospels and Lost Christianities? ā Program 4
By: Dr. Darrell Bock; ©2006 |
Was Jesus human? Was he divine? Is the whole God/man idea purely a myth? How can you ever unscramble the conflicting information to reach a conclusion? |
Jesus: God or Man or Both?
Introduction
Today on The John Ankerberg Show, What about the Missing Gospels and Lost Christianities that archaeologists say they have now? Some scholars at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale claim that these lost Gospels and alternative Christian groups existed shortly after the time of Jesus and the apostles.
Further, these people claimed to be true Christians, but did not believe Jesus was God, nor did they believe in his resurrection from the dead. Some scholars claim that this new evidence indicates we must rewrite church history and give up traditional beliefs about Jesus. God, and the Bible. Is this true? What evidence refutes these views?
Today, you will find out. My guest is considered one of the top historical Jesus scholars in the world. He is Dr. Darrell Bock, research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. He has appeared on ABC with Diane Sawyer, on NBCās dateline with Stone Phillips, and with Bill OāReilly on Fox. His new book The Missing Gospels, Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities, examines these lost Gospels and tells why they are not true Christianity. He has also written 13 other books including, Breaking the Da Vinci Code.
We invite you to join us.
- Ankerberg: Alright. Weāre talking with one of my favorite guests, Dr. Darrell Bock. And weāre talking about some of the things that are on the bookshelves in our stores across America right now, and itās being taught in our universities and itās something that you need to know. Itās called Lost Christianities. Itās called The Gnostic Bible.
- What theyāre saying is that there are books that have been discovered in the sands of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, that go back to about 200 AD and they are alternative Christianities. That is, that they were groups that called themselves Christian, but they held different beliefs than what you guys in the church hold.
- So youāve got traditional Christianity over here, but theyāre saying that youāve got these alternative Christianities over here, and these alternative Christianities, these views over here, have a Jesus who was not both God and man. Youāve got a different God, youāve got a different creation, youāve got a different problem, youāve got a different plan of salvation. But that was a legitimate, the scholars are saying, that was a legitimate view that we ought to look at today. In fact, some have converted over to that view, and theyāre trying to convert your kids that are going to these schools, that thereās historical evidence that shows this is better than what you in the Church have held. Thatās wrong, and weāve got the expert here to explain this and unscramble it.
- And I want to start with one of the quotes of Bart Ehrman at University of North Carolina, whoās got this Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Hereās what he says, and then Darrell, Iād like you to unscramble this. Their view is, āthe early Christian church was a chaos of contending beliefs.ā Youāve got all these different various beliefs. āSome groups of Christians claimed there was not one God, but two, or twelve or even thirty gods.ā This is a Gnostic view, and youāll have to explain that in a minute. āSome believe that the world had not been created by God, but by a lesser ignorant deity.ā We talked about that in a couple program, but mention it again. āCertain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human.ā
- And, the fact is, the scholars are saying this is whatās out there, theyāve got hard evidence for it. Youāre saying thatās wrong. Unscramble that for us.
- Bock: Well, the idea of early Christianity being chaos depends on, really, what period youāre talking about. Are we talking about AD 50, when Paul is writing? Are we talking about the middle of the second century, or the end of the second century when these groups are starting to spring up and are creating enough of a stir that there are people writing huge tomes in response to them, because obviously, they are drawing some attention? If heās talking about the late second century, then that statement has an element of truth to it. But if heās talking about the earliest period, it really is way off.
- Another problem with the statement is the idea that thereās this human Jesus with no divinity attached to him. Bart Ehrman, when he makes this claim, is doing it through the idea that, just like you have āThe Gospel of Thomas,ā that doesnāt have a divine Jesusā and weāve already shown that there are problems with thatāthere also is the tradition in the Gospels, the teaching that Matthew and Luke share, which is often called āQā material, that also doesnāt have a divine Jesus. But heās managed to leave out another important passage. And unfortunately for Bart, there is the temptation of Jesus, which is a part of the āQā material, where Satan comes and confronts Jesus as the son of God.
- Ankerberg: Alright. This āQā material. People are saying, āWhat in the world is āQā material?ā
- Bock: āQā material is teaching material that Matthew and Luke share. And the belief is that it was one of these traditional sources of Jesusā teaching, because the argument is, Matthew and Luke didnāt use each other, but they obviously have about 200 verses between them that they share. Where did it come from? It must have come from an early church source.
- Ankerberg: And thatās not unbelievable, because Luke himself says he knew about many sources in Luke 1:1.
- Bock: Exactly right. And even if it isnāt a āQā source, even if Matthewās got it from Luke or vice versa, it still is the case that you have this material that Ehrman is claiming comes from Q and that Q never discusses the divinity of Jesus, and yet the temptationā¦
- Ankerberg: Why do they use the letter āQā?
- Bock: It means āsource.ā Thatās what most people think itā¦
- Ankerberg: Q from Quelle.
- Bock: āQuelleā for the German word.
- Ankerberg: Okay, so theyāre saying you had this source. Keep going.
- Bock: So, heās wrong on suggesting that the early period was terribly chaotic. I mean, the chaos in the first century wasnāt with these views about multiple gods, etc. The chaos in the first century was with the reaction of Judaism. Heās wrong with regard to the suggestion that the sources that we have, the earliest sources that we have, suggest that thereās a human Jesus. We donāt have any text anywhere, any source strand anywhere in all our materials, that has just a human Jesus. When someone embraces Jesus, they either view him as human and divine or exclusively divine.
- Ankerberg: And the Gnostics were exclusively divine.
- Bock: Some of them. Some of them. Some of them had a mix. And some of them had this Jesus who had become so divine that, when the figure who goes on the cross goes on the cross, thatās not Jesus.
- Ankerberg: Youāve got two entities at that point.
- Bock: Exactly.
- Ankerberg: Alright. Go back to this thing that Helmut Koester at Harvard has put out there and Elaine Pagels has picked it up and itās been reflected in The Da Vinci Code, the popular stuff, that the reason that the traditional view of Jesusāthat he was actually saying that he was God, he actually died on the cross, he actually did these miraclesāwas because down the pike at Nicea at 325 this was jammed down everybodyās throat by a group of powerful men. Helmut Koester goes back and says, look thereās evidence that, geographically in the Roman Empire, across the Mediterranean, and so on, in different places, you had these groups that had this Gnostic Jesus, but they didnāt have the traditional Jesus. Why has that been shown to be false now?
- Bock: Well, this is an important claim. And Koester popularized it, but the real person it goes back to is Walter Bauer. He wrote a work in 1930ās, 1934, in German. And it was called āOrthodoxy and Heresy in the Earliest Christianity.ā And his theory was that if you break Christianity up into the geographical regionsāso think about Northern Egypt, think about Asia Minor, what is now the Turkey area, think about Antioch and Syria, and think about Romeāthat if you divide it up into those areas, some of these areas were alternative Christian majorities. In fact, many of them were, and a few of them were the more orthodox. Rome was orthodoxā¦.
- Ankerberg: That was his theory.
- Bock: The problem is that church historians working this material basically say Bauerās got it wrong. Heās only got one area where it may be the case. Itās a place called Edessa. Now, the reason youāve never heard of it is because itās not one of the great centers of Christianity in early Christian history. Antioch of Syria was much more important. Alexandria of Egypt was much more important. Rome was much more important. He doesnāt mention Jerusalem at all, which obviously was orthodox from the beginning. And so the problem here is that at Edessa, it might be the case. The problem is, we have next to no evidence of materials from Edessa, so anyone can say just about anything they want about Edessa and make it plausible.
- Take Edessa out of the equation, all the other areas, according to most church historians, it was not the case that these alternative views were the most prevalent. In fact, they were a substantial minority in many cases. And in some cases views have switched. Birger Pearson, whoās probably the foremost expert about Egypt, his view has changed on this in light of new evidence that came up in the 60s and 70s thatās been publicized.
- Ankerberg: The second scholarly opinion thatās coming into the popular books is, okay, the different geographical areas, they did have this traditional view, but thereās a reason for it, namely is that you had these bishops, the Roman Catholic Church, these guys, they enforced this view and they destroyed all the other books, and now itās just surfacing. So the suppressed Gnostic view that was really back there, now weāve got to give them a real hearing.
- Bock: Yes, and I think the problem with this is that this is really an argument from silence. There are three scenarios that one could work with here. One is that the traditional view was right, and the reason we donāt have these materials in the early period: they werenāt there. They werenāt there; thereās nothing to have evidence for. If thatās the case, the traditional view is right. The second idea is that, well, weāve got these later materials and we can project back earlier that because theyāre in these later materials, maybe they actually are a little older than the materials we actually have.
- Now, most of the work that Iāve done has operated on this premise. Letās assume that thatās the case. We canāt prove it, but letās assume that thatās the case. Where does that leave us? Well, what it leaves us with is, we still have two problems. One is, these two views are so different thereās no way to meld them. Theyāre going to be opponents.
- Ankerberg: Theyāre black and white.
- Bock: Theyāre going to be opponents no matter what. So even if it is earlier, youāve still got different views. And then the second factor is, only one of these traditions really has a line, a genealogy, that takes you back to the roots of Christianity, and thatās the traditional model.
- Ankerberg: And the scholars today are trying to say, look we just had these views that are out there, they were floating, they were kind of co-existing. The fact is, what theyāre not telling the kids, and theyāre not telling the public, is both views knew of the other and criticized, and said, we canāt live with that view. They werenāt trying to join up.
- Bock: Thatās right.
- Ankerberg: Talk about how the Gnostics looked at their own critics.
- Bock: Well, the way the Gnostics looked at their own critics, and you can see this in some of the materials that they haveā¦
- Ankerberg: And the critics were the Church Fathers.
- Bock: The critics were the Church Fathers. Thatās who they were criticizing. And we have some quotations here, theyāre short, from The Apocalypse of Peter. The leaders of the competitive viewāthat would be the apostles and the bishops and the line that they representāare described as āempty channelsā in The Apocalypse of Peter 79:30ā just in case you want to look it up.
- Ankerberg: Yah.
- Bock: And then in The Testimony of Truth 34:26 it says of the traditionalists, āThey do not have the word which gives life.ā Now, thatās pretty clear. Thatās pretty clear that the Gnostics were teaching, āWe canāt coexist with these people. They donāt have the truth.ā
- Ankerberg: Thatās what the Gnostics were saying about the Christians. What did the Christians say about the Gnostics?
- Bock: Well, what the Christians were saying about the Gnostics can be indicated in a text like 2 John 7. And 2 John 7 says, āMany deceivers have gone out into the world, people who do not confess Jesus as Christ coming in the flesh. This person is the deceiver and the antichrist.ā Now, thatās also pretty clear. You may not have the word āheresyā being used here, but thatās what youāre saying.
- Ankerberg: But if that goes back to 85, 90 AD, these groups in full bloom werenāt over there. This was knocking the idea that was emerging at that time, right?
- Bock: Exactly. Exactly right. What was happening was that this view was emerging because,⦠and notice what it is that theyāre knocking. The problem isnāt that Jesus is human and needs to be developed into the divine; itās the problem going the other way. Jesus, the Christ, has not come in the flesh. Heās not human. Thatās the first thing to note about this. The second thing to note about it is that some of these ideas were emerging because they percolated in the Greek philosophy of the timeā¦
- Ankerberg: The Gnostic ideas.
- Bock: The Gnostic ideas. And Gnostic ideas are really what we call syncretistic. Itās a mix, okay. Itās a mix of Christianity with Greek philosophy.
- Ankerberg: They were pulling from all sources.
- Bock: Thatās right, or trying to get whatever they could. Because their goal was to say, āLetās make Christianity more palatable to the culture.ā And this is a more palatable way to think about itābecause of the way people thought about God. To think that God would lower himself to become human? Ah, come on. Letās do something else.
- Ankerberg: Alright, weāre going to take a break. When we come back weāre going to hit the main point that we want to get across. In these traditional sources vs. these Gnostic sources, youāve got a completely different Jesus, and you have a Jesus who doesnāt even suffer on the cross in the Gnostic view. Where you have a Jesus that really suffered for our sins; if you think of The Passion, and the stripes that were on Christ, and the nails going through his hands, did he really experience that pain, or didnāt he? And what difference does it make? Weāre going to talk about that when we come right back.
- Ankerberg: Alright, weāre back. Weāre talking with Dr. Darrell Bock here, and weāre talking about something that is very important. The books that have been found at Nag Hammadi, called the Gnostic books, over 50 different books, that go back to about the second century, that claim theyāve got a Christianity that is not like the traditional Christianity. And the scholars today at Princeton, Harvard, University of North Carolina, Yale, are saying, āListen, this stuff is going to be just as valid as what you Christians believe.ā Some say itās even more valid; itās at least a legitimate option out there.
- But the fact is, when you look at the core beliefs of this group vs. the core beliefs of Christians that have come down to us, they donāt have the historical links back to Jesus that we do, and weāre trying to show those links. And theyāve got, when you look at their content, theyāve got a different God, a different Jesus, a different problem in terms of humanity, whether itās, we say sin is the problem, youāre separated from God, theyāve got youāre just lacking knowledge, youāve got to get some self-knowledge, some self-understanding, and thatās the problem.
- So you have a different Jesus, and weāre talking about the view of Jesus, and weāre showing the historical links. And, Darrell, take us back to, weāve already shown some of the ones that were the apostles and close to the apostles. So youāve got Jesus talking, we assume Jesus knew what he was talking about himself. His apostle heard that, they recorded that. But weāre going one step further in the historical link. Weāre going to the disciples of the apostles, if you want, and the Church Fathers after that. Itās all a continuous thread of who Jesus was, and thatās very powerful evidence. Share some of that with us.
- Bock: Yes. What weāre arguing is that in the traditional stream, which weāre calling orthodoxy, that the tradition was passed on, and that this theology, this core theology the traditionalists had, was consistent as you work through these periods. And so after the period when the apostles pass away, you have the period of the Church Fathers who knew the apostles, thatās why theyāre called that. And then the next group that comes along is called the apologists. Theyāre the people who are actually making an active full defense of the faith; Justin Martyr being the first of those in the middle of the second century. So weāre now into works that are being written at the same time these alternative works are starting to pop up on the scene like popcorn. And 2 Clement is an interesting work. Itās a second century work,ā¦
- Ankerberg: Christian work.
- Bock: Christian work, itās a part of this orthodox tradition that weāre talking about. This is notā¦
- Ankerberg: And this is criticizing the other side.
- Bock: Thatās right. Itās talking about, the other side is saying, remember, that the flesh is corrupt. And because itās corrupt itās not going to be saved, youāre just going to redeem the spirit, or in some cases the soul, but matter gets left behind. Youāre not going to get a transformed flesh like 1 Corinthians 15 claims.
- Ankerberg: And the Gnostics would say the Christians are wrong in their view, and the Christians have said that theyāre wrong. So youāve got two different conflicting opinions. And youāre showing the Christian side. Now, what does the Christian side say?
- Bock: Hereās what 2 Clement says. This is 2 Clement 9:1-5: āLet none of us say that this flesh is not judged and does not rise again. Understand this: in what state were you saved, in what state did you recover your sight, if it is not while you were in this flesh? We must therefore guard the flesh as a temple of God. For just as you were called in the flesh, so you will come in the flesh. If Christ, the Lord who saved us, became flesh, even though he was originally spirit, and in that state called us, so also we shall receive our reward in this flesh.ā And so this is a statement about the humanity of Jesus alongside the divinity. Remember the Gnostic view is either that weāve got this mix or, more often, that Jesus is uniquely divine and canāt become completely human, he can only appear to be human. And so 2 Clement is writing against that.
- Ankerberg: Okay, my listeners out there might be saying, their eyes might be glazing over and saying, āWhat difference does it make? I mean, what difference does it make that Jesus actually came in the flesh vs. being in the spirit? I mean, who cares!?ā
- Bock: Well, what traditional Christianity has said from the very beginning is that it matters a great deal that Jesus came in the flesh. John 1: āIn the beginning the word was with God, the word was God.ā āThe word,ā John 1:14, ābecame flesh.ā āHe tabernacled amongst us.ā Hebrews says that we have a sympathetic High Priest, that we have a representative. When he goes to take our place on the cross itās because he represents us. Heās lived a life that cleanses us. He shows us that it is possible to live such a life through the Spirit. All this is very important.
- Remember that Gnosticism doesnāt see us as the problem, other than in our knowledge: as long as we get the right knowledgeāthat weāve got a divine spark in usāthatās all that we need. But traditional Christianity said, āNo, the problemās much deeper than that. And if you donāt face up to this, youāll never really fix the problem; because the problem is us and our responsibility and our accountability before a Creator.ā
- So the Gnostic view of God has an uneducated human being, if you want to think of it that way, who needs knowledge. The traditional view of God has a human being who is flawed and who has turned against the Creator and needs to be reconciled with that Creator in order to reestablish a healthy relationship with God.
- Ankerberg: And letās just put it where itās at. The traditional view has got all the historical evidence, and if itās right, that means Darrell Bock and John Ankerberg are responsible to that God for what weāve done in this flesh. We are sinners. Now, we need an answer for our sin problem, and Jesus came to be that answer. Explain that.
- Bock: Yes. Jesus came to be that answer. Heās our representative. He is our substitute. He is the one who identifies with us. He shows that it is possible to be a human being and walk with God, through the work that he does in being obedient to God, etc. And all this flows into the forgiveness that he then offers and the restored relationship that he offers.
- I like to say that eternal life is not about the fact that Iām going to live forever, or that one day Iām going to be transformed. Eternal life is about having an eternity of a quality of life with God. Itās an unending life of quality with God. āI came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.ā It isnāt just that itās going to last forever, or that Iām going to miss out on some judgment. No, Iām interested in salvation, not because of what I am spared; Iām interested in salvation because of what it does in my relationship to God. It puts me back in touch with the creator God.
- Ankerberg: Alright. Summarize what weāve seen today, and where weāre going next week.
- Bock: Well, what weāve seen today is there really are difference between this Gnostic alternative Christianityāitās not historically grounded, itās historical claims are false, as well as the way itās describing the theology of whatās going on. Both of them are false at both levels, and it can be shown to be false at those levels. The traditional Christianity has its roots going all the way back, back, back, back, back to the beginning, not only just to Jesus, but into Judaism. Thatās very, very important. And so part of the reaction to this group was not only that they had responded to Jesus inappropriately, they had responded inappropriately to the picture of God.
- Ankerberg: Alright. I think we want to go next week to the salvation that is really being offered by Jesus Christ. Look, Jesus blew the apostles minds, he blew the minds of the people that heard him when he said, āIām the I AM that brought your forefathers out of Egypt. Iām God standing here talking to you.ā Okay? But then Paul couldnāt get over the fact that this one who was the Messiah, who was God in the flesh, went to the cross and suffered for our sins. And the Gnostics say Jesus, when he went to the cross, didnāt suffer any pain, because he didnāt need to, okay? And we want to talk about, what are the different plans of salvation that are presented, the core ideas that have come down through Christianity, and that are being presented today in Gnosticism. Weāll talk it next week.