Many people do not make a distinction between faith and religion. Millions of Muslims, for example, believe that Faith is the submission to the will of God. In other words, it is obedience to the religion of Islam. Other people to make a distinction. Numerous Christians, for example, claim they dislike organized religion but practice faith.
But for me faith and religion are inseparably wed together.
One might object that I have simply defined faith and religion differently than they have--and all are valid descriptions of the same sort of spiritual experience, more or less. I am going to argue that semantics, although highly important to clarify our subject matter, is besides the point in this case. Allow me to explain.
Logically speaking, faith is the byproduct of religion. It's not a semantics issue so much as a pragmatic issue. Without any religious beliefs there simply could be no faith to be had in these beliefs to begin with.
A reader recently asked me, "Faith is religion enacted? Hmmm.... I've always thought of it as the reverse. Faith is what's in the head, religion is the outward behaviours associated with it, isn't it?"
She's not wrong, mind you, but she is only seeing half of the picture.
I find this to be a really good question, because it highlights the confusion many people have with regard to faith. Lots of people are confusing generic faith, i.e. the faith that I will wake up in the morning, or that the sun will continue to rise, or that the weather forecast will be accurate with the more specialized form of religious faith.
The thing about generic faith is that, on occasion, you can be mistaken. Perhaps you will have a heart attack in your sleep, or you wake up to a rare instance of a solar eclipse, or the weather forecast turns out to be wrong--as it so often does. This sort of faith is *not the kind of Faith religious people are prescribing to when they claim to have faith in some supernatural entity, such as God, or some religious claim.
For the religious person, Faith is more of a profession of piety, the loyal unquestioning devotional acceptance of a religious proposition, ideology, creed, practice, or tenet.
Needless to say, religious Faith is not the same as every day mundane faith. I am not implying that's what our reader meant. She merely assumed that faith was the belief (or sum of beliefs) one holds, and religion is the behavior compelled by the total framework of that belief system. I would say, yes, this is accurate. But there is another aspect to faith we can't ignore. Faith based acts are predicated on religious propositions as much as holding the religious beliefs in the first place is predicated on one's willingness to accept them as true.
I guess the way I go about it is by asking the question how, in the first place, could one possibly have faith in something if there were not prior beliefs about that something to believe in?
In otherwords, what is it one is professing faith in, if not specific beliefs based on the claims of their particular religion? Basically, beliefs about one's religion equate to religious faith. But I do not think we can say that faith is simply believing; it is also doing.
For example, Christians profess faith in the belief that Jesus is the begotten Son of God, that he came to earth to atone for the sins of mankind, that he was sentenced to death upon the cross, and that three days after his death he rose again in a glorious resurrection. These are the basic beliefs one must prescribe to, and believe as true, in order to accurately call oneself a believer in Christ.
This helps paint the picture of what Christians are actually professing faith in. They are professing faith in the acceptance of the premise that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died and resurrected, and that through his sacrifice and shedding of blood he washed away the sins of mankind. Moreover, they are accepting the belief that the religion requires them to think, act, and behave in a certain way. In other words, we discover that faith is the unquestioning acceptance of these beliefs.
But then the question becomes, where do we get these beliefs from in the first place? After all, you don't start with faith and then generate beliefs. You first need the belief to have faith in.
Well, it seems to me these beliefs are found in the tenets, creeds, principles, and practices of religion. Religion is a complex human construct. It involves philosophical ideas, various traditions, and highly ritualized practices which are all inseparably tied to human culture, psychology, and experience. Many people form their very identities based on their religions. Many more choose to live their lives according to their religious beliefs. This is what I call Faith. It is religion followed out in devotional acts of faithful adherence to the aforesaid tenets, creeds, principles, and practices contained within religion.
Therefore, it stems to reason that the religion is the bedrock for faith. Religion has to exist before it can give rise to faith based beliefs and rituals. Just as you cannot have belief in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior without the Bible, without the tenets, creeds, and established traditions of Christianity as a guideline of what to believe and what manner to conduct oneself as Christian, so too must faith come out of religion.
But to call oneself a Christian one must accept certain claims about moral conduct, follow certain practices such as baptism, and must live life according to the teachings of Christ. A person could believe in Christ all they wanted to, but believing alone isn't enough, you have to follow the teachings as well.
Genuine faith asks you to accept a specific set of beliefs derived from the religious realm. Many of these beliefs are supernatural propositions. That is, in the absence of any evidence to support the religious claim, you have to take it on faith that these supernatural claims are true.
When a believer prays to God, they are practicing a religious act based on the religious claim that God hears, and occasionally, answers their prayers. If you believed in prayer, however, but never prayed--then could you really say with honesty that you thought prayer was valid? How would you separate your faith from atheism? An atheist doesn't believe in prayer so that's why they refrain from the practice. No, I think it is rather quite clear why people pray. Life sucks. God, according to their religion, promises them a little something better if only they pray hard enough and believe deeply enough. Therefore the believer is called upon to put their religious beliefs, their faith, into practice.
So you see, faith is religion enacted.
Here we discover an important chronological order we must take into consideration when discussing the issue of religious faith. To picture it another way, religion is like a tree, and faith is like a branch on that tree. Many religions spawn numerous faiths, but the faiths might differ slightly in what religious propositions they accept as true and which religious doctrines they emphasize as most important to abide by and obey. A Calvinist believes something slightly different than a Lutheran and a Catholic believes in a slightly different variation of the religion still. But these various branches of faith all sprout from the same tree.
***
I'd like to note, as an aside, that religion, indeed all religions, are derived from the human tendency to formulate supernatural explanations/beliefs for that which we don't fully understand.
This is in part due to how human brains are wired and how our basic psychology causes us to be pattern seekers. So to be entirely pedantic, religion requires one to be prone to a certain level of supernatural thinking before religious beliefs can be properly generated and, likewise, faith can come out of the religion.
As such, I view religious faith as a type of supernatural belief, not a rational or pragmatic one. Many theologians claim that faith can be had rationally, but I do not see how this is possible, unless one relinquishes all faith in supernatural claims in the first place. But if one did this, then religion couldn't arise and there would be no faith.
Rational inquiry and skepticism seem to kill off the tendency we have to take supernatural claims for granted--because it asks us to be critical of anything that is lacking in evidence or doesn't line up with the facts. Since religion relies on the supernatural, so too faith. A supernatural claim cannot be entertained rationally apart from any valid support to establish the belief as reliable. This usually requires evidence, and supernatural claims usually fail to support themselves with evidence. So faith, in my opinion, will always suffer from a certain level of irrationality which is built into it due to its reliance on supernatural religious propositions which ask you to believe minus any trustworthy empirical understanding.
I only mention this as an aside, since it goes a long way to help explain why so many religious beliefs and practices are bat-shit insane. If religion relies on the supernatural, and the supernatural cannot be completely rational, then faith is bound to be irrational more often than not. Thus all the practices and customs derived from religious faith risk suffering from the same sort of irrationality.
It's was makes people entertain the absurd notion that God cares whether or not they masturbate, whether or not they take birth control, whether or not they eat pork, whether or not women may attend religious service when they are menstruation, whether or not one covers their head or takes of their shoes in church, whether or not one prays kneeling toward the East or with palms pressed together and heads bowed slightly, it is what makes people think Holy Communion is real and that circumcision is a good idea. It is why so many believers write horribly stupid things on Facebook--such as the endless thanks and praise of God for, you know, curing their cancer, or not getting cancer, or getting an A on a report card, or scoring the winning touch down.
Yet all of these religious practices and beliefs prove to be entirely irrational in response to events which can all be understood rationally. There is not a single shred of evidence, apart from the sheer willingness to accept these fantastic religious claims unconditionally, that they constitute any sort of supernatural intervention on the believer's behalf. They are merely the peculiar, irrational, religious beliefs leading to peculiar, often irrational, demonstrations of faith.
Although people aren't fully rational all of the time, I think the case can be made that religion often asks highly rational people to be less than rational in favor of slightly irrational supernatural propositions.
I have always had a difficult time explaining to Christians all the numerous reasons why I have come to detest the Bible and its teachings contained therein. Of the the Bible's contemptible teachings one of the worst is that of it's defense (and in many cases indifference) of slavery.
Many Christians claim that I have read or interpreted the Bible incorrectly. I usually get so frustrated by their hardheadedness and tactless comments that I preemptively end the conversation. Call me "sensitive," whatever, but I out right refuse to have a "serious" discussion with anyone who would defend something as horrible as slavery based on nothing more than the feeling that I am mistaken without giving it any further consideration.
I don't like being talked down to in such a condescending manner--as if I couldn't read or comprehend the book I studied for three long decades. As if having two college degrees has somehow made me too sophist in my philosophical inquiries. Imagine my dismay when these are the very same conflicted allegations I continue to receive today. Yeah, either I am a moron or an intellectual elitist. That clears things up.
Such slander doesn't sit well with me--and to make it worse Christians usually throw it out there as a matter of fact--either way--I'm an idiot or elitist snob--either way I am wrong because I do not prescribe to their Christian worldview. But why is the Christian worldview merely assumed to be right? This is the question I had roughly twenty-nine odd years ago, and upon investigating the matter I discovered that... contrary to the ubiquitous opinion of the unquestioning religious... Christianity is not a perfect belief system.
Perhaps, however, my self defensiveness has always had a way of getting in the way of me explaining the exact reasons why I think that the Bible is detestable, contemptible, and immoral.
In my past popular articles, like The Imperfect and Immoral Teachings of Jesus Christ, I have frequently raised several objections to the moral character of the person Christians worship by pointing out his acceptance of human bondage and slavery.
Predictably, however, the Christian defense erupts with claims that I am mistaken, wrong, and arrogant. Who would have the audacity to claim the perfect son of God is in anyway immoral or would gladly allow such a thing as lowly and despicable as slavery? Only a cold hearted atheist who is angry at God--well--that's the usual (and totally inaccurate) spiel of the Christian apologist who has entirely missed the point I was attempting to make.
In the end, however, am I really wrong?
No. I don't think so. And here is the why.
In what follows is an extensive, and highly detailed look, at Biblical slavery by the YouTube blogger Discovering Religion. In it he shows beyond a shadow of doubt that the Bible not only condones slavery (rather than condemning it) but also (in part 3) explains my very same concerns as why this destroys the "loving" God theology of Christianity utterly and totally.
Without a doubt--there is NO redemption for the Bible or its most ardent defenders. Christianity is a corrupt ideology through and through and the good bits (what little there is) are overshadowed by the predominant horrors that it condones. It doesn't matter that modern sensibilities have overridden the unjust practice of slavery--the teachings continue to exist within the Bible as a mark indicating the exact depth of its moral corruption--and taken in their proper context--there is no denying that these teachings are highly unethical, if not downright evil.
Please watch these videos. They explain my line of reasoning with a clarity I sometimes lack.
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
–Carl Sagan
Until now we have mostly been looking at reasons why most of these early Christian writings, including the Gospel accounts, cannot be considered historically accurate or reliable and how this complicates belief in Jesus. The same suspicion is cast over the whole resurrection event also.[i]Even so the resurrection of Christ, the defining characteristic which unifies Christian thought, is too big of a topic to tackle in the space of a few pages, but knowing that the historical account is untrustworthy, some interesting questions arise as to the nature of the resurrection narrative. As the title implies, and so too is the thesis of this chapter, I firmly feel it’s more than inadequate to rely on the Biblical account as attestation to the Christian presumption that Jesus resurrected.Be that as it may, I must make my case if others are going to agree with me.
If miracles are to be considered real, assuming that the supernatural is possible, then the greatest miracle of all would have to be coming back to life after a brutal death, a burial, and a span of three days—i.e., a genuine resurrection. That would be a tad bit more astonishing than miraculously popping into existence ala magically inseminated virgins. Granted, coming back to life is no trivial matter. If Jesus did it, after three days of being deceased, then this would definitively prove he was supernaturally inclined, although it may or may not prove that he was necessarily the Son of God or the Christian Messiah. According to the Biblical historian James D. Tabor in his book The Jesus Dynasty:
The standard Christian proclamation is well known: that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he appeared to many witnesses, and that he ascended into heaven, where he sits as the glorified Christ at the right hand of God, from where he will return at the end of the age to judge the living and the dead…. Three of our four New Testament gospels report “sightings” of Jesus to support the idea that he had been raised from the dead—Matthew, Luke and John. But what about Mark? Here we come to one of the most ignored and underrated facts of our story. As shocking as it may sound, the original manuscripts of the gospel of Mark report no appearances of the resurrected Jesus at all![ii]
This is problematic for Christians, especially considering that Mark’s original ending has Mary and Salome flee in fear never to tell anyone about the empty tomb (Mark 16:8). If they didn’t tell anyone, then how do the authors of the rest of the Gospels find out about it? But before Tabor lets the notion settle in our minds, however, he reiterates another very important and oft overlooked fact, which may shed light on whether or not Jesus was thought of as divine by those around him, affirming, “There is no evidence that James worshiped his brother or considered him divine.”[iii] If Jesus’ own brother, James the Just, who knew Jesus intimately and outlived him, eventually taking over leadership roles in the early Christian movement, never once worshiped his kin as the Son of God then we should perhaps question why this was so.
These two events, however, seem to offer us two very important clues which we must keep in the back of our mind. The first being that, according to the first of the Gospels, nobody should technically know about Jesus “resurrection” because the story ends with nobody finding out—and to me this suggests the resurrection is a literary theme, since the other Gospel writers included an unknown element into their own works. The most reasonable explanation is that Mark is not reporting on actually historical events, the resurrection didn’t happen in reality, it happened on paper, and that’s why the *story ends with nobody finding out—but anyone who read the story would undeniably know the important theme and they would be free to retell it—and this is just what Matthew, Luke, and John proceed to do. If the resurrection of Jesus was a historical event, then the problem of how the later authors came to find out about it arises, but the literary hypothesis does away with such considerations making it the more likely choice. Just as importantly, the second point about Jesus not being worshiped by his own brother fits the same thesis. Jesus may have been a rebel, a political upstart, and a Jew with radical views, but nobody thought of him as divine (not until much later). Such a historical Jesus, however politically intriguing he may have been, seems to suggest that the notion of resurrection, and the belief that he was divine, is all a later fabrication created by later evangelist Christian authors. We’ll come back to these points shortly.
Trying to Peg Jesus Down
Trying to place the resurrection of Christ into a historical framework is a troubling area of debate since the only official extra-biblical commentary of it comes from the unreliable Jewish Historian Josephus Flavius. Even the Gospels are not in harmony on the subject. Since this is the case, we might try to find a triangulation in other historical texts, even though contemporaneous sources external to the Gospels usually give relatively little information about Jesus.
Without a historical backdrop to gauge the dependability of the stories, we cannot merely assume the Gospel accounts are in any way accurate report of them (also because it seems the inference that they are literary works supplies a much less awkward answer to the problem). Take for example, the original Gospel of Mark, which does not contain the virgin birth or post resurrection stories.[iv]According to the New Testament historian and theologian David Trobisch, “The resurrected Christ has not appeared and the first witnesses ‘say nothing to anyone.’ This is the worst imaginable ending for a Gospel.”[v]About the strange resurrectionless ending, professor Tabor is quick to remind us that, “such a shockingly “incomplete” ending could not be allowed to stand. It must have been deeply troubling to early Christians. Christianity was built upon the idea that Jesus appeared after his death to various individuals and groups. How could Mark have possibly left this out?... What happened was that pious scribes who copied Mark made up an ending for him and added it to his texts sometime in the late 2nd century A.D.—over one hundred years after the original text was composed!”[vi]
Early Christianswere keenly aware of this problem, and it is why the Gospel of Mark was augmented to better fit into the canonical whole. Not only was an appropriate ending attached to fit with Christian belief, but because of the lack of a virgin birth as well the story was mistakenly placedafter Matthew, as a bridge to Luke, to smooth over the difficulty. Rearranged in such a way, the absence of virgin births and post resurrection Christs becomes indistinguishable when wedged uncomfortably between the continuity of Matthew and Luke. It’s only later that historians realized that, in actuality, it is Matthew and Luke which both borrow heavily from Mark.
Meanwhile the longer ending of Mark comes from a variety of New Testament sources which get cannibalized for their parts in the struggle for early editors to provide an authoritative version of the Resurrection accounts (cf., Mark 6:9 with John 20; Mark 16:12-16 with Luke 24 and Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:17-20 with Acts 1:9, 2:6-8 and 28:5; and the closing sentence of the last ending “And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere,” appears to have been derived from Acts also). Tabor informs, “It is in fact a clumsy composite of the sightings of Jesus reported by Matthew, Luke, and John. It contains no independent material that can be identified as specifically from Mark, and the Greek style in which it is written is decidedly non-Markan.”[vii] In fact, the longer version of Mark was unknown to Clement of Alexandria and Origen, meanwhile, Eusebius and Jerome writing in the 4th century A.D., know of its existence but note that it is absent from almost all Greek manuscripts of which they are aware, and also mention two other “fake” endings. All this suggests that the longer ending, the one in which contains Jesus’ resurrection, may indeed also be artificial, that is, a literary creation.
Other Historical Concerns
What do these historical insights mean for the everyday practicing Christian? A lot actually. It seems to suggest some things which directly stand in opposition to some core Christian beliefs. But the question of whether or not Jesus resurrected is just one part of a larger problem. Other historical concerns could easily defeat the “truth” of Christianity as well, concerns such as, 1) It is more likely that Jesus was notborn of a virgin and, 2) even Paul neglects to mention the virgin birth entirely (as if it never occurred at all), and furthermore, 3) Paul only ever alludes to the spiritually risen Christ(not a bodily “resurrected” one) who, conveniently enough, speaks to him on the sun-baked desert road to Damascus in what may amount to no more than heat-stroke induced visions, 4) the earliestmanuscripts of the Gospel of Mark neither contain a virgin birth nor a post-resurrection Christ, and last but not least, 5) the longer ending of Mark seems to be purely a literary fabrication—and if so what is to suggest the rest of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection are not also?
All this seemingly detracts from the debonair claim made by Christians that Jesus was divine, resurrected, and reappeared to his followers.In turn, this casts doubt as to whether or not the Gospels are historically reliable. As it turns out, they seem to be mostly literary in origin only containing simple references to historical landmarks, names, and places. Yet this should not surprise us, for all literature contains these things.
Apologists have retreated to the claim that, at the very least, we cannot know that the resurrection did not happen. Many have stated as much, giving the example that we can no more know that Jesus was resurrected from the dead than we can know if Julius Caesar was born by caesarian section. Julius Caesar may have been born via caesarian section and Jesus may have been bodily resurrected from the dead—almost anything is possible—however these scenarios are highly improbable if not completely impracticable. The fact that we cannot prove they did not happen does not improve our understanding of the past.Such admissionsshould be viewed as a weakness, not as a boon. The lack of any ancillary contemporaneous information regarding the resurrection, whether or not we can prove it happened, simply amounts to the implicit acknowledgment that, as Frank R. Zindler has asserted, no one will ever provide convincing evidence for the historicity of Jesus. That’s not a strong position to mount a defense of the Christian faith on.
Even so, Christians still try to find ways to prove the historical existence of a quondam Jesus. Equally, Carrier reminds us that:
Christian apologists will often insist we have to explain the “fact” of the empty tomb. But…the evidence is not the discovery of an empty tomb but the existence of a story about the discovery of an empty tomb. That there was an actual empty tomb is only a theory… to explain the production of the story.... But this theory must be compared with other possible explanations of how and why that story came to exist… and these must be compared on the total examination of the evidence…. Hence, a common mistake is to confuse hypotheses about the evidence with the actual evidence itself.[viii]
Whereas Carrier proposes historians use Bayes’s Theorem to correct for our mistakes I think we can simplify the logic behind Bayes’s theorem to the simple theory of truth, which is basically this: we start with two things, the objective facts and the claims. Upon indicating which claims, the facts being there, will and will not work successfully when plugged into our working model of history we will be left with the best inference to the truth.
If the theory fits the facts and coincides with the working model of history then we can be relatively certain that this is a good theory. As Carrier cautions, however, we must take extra notice not to haphazardly force facts to fit the theories thereby squeezing out the theory which, opportunely enough, aligns with our convictions and religious claims (something most Christian apologists frequently and recklessly do). Instead of the forcing history to fit our claims we must adjust our claims to fit the available evidence thereby gaining a more accurate depiction of history.
Notes
[i] Richard Carrier is a historian in ancient Greece who has offered a thorough refutation of the resurrection account of Jesus. See his article “Why I Don‘t Buy the Resurrection Story.” Available online at:http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html
[ii] James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 228, 230
[iii]Ibid, p. 280
[iv] Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities, pp.78, 220.
[v] David Trobisch, “The Authorized Version of His Birth and Death,” in Sources of the Jesus Tradition, ed. R. Joseph Hoffmann, p.135
[vi]Jame D. Tabor,The Jesus Dynasty, p. 230
[vii]Ibid., p. 231
[viii] Richard Carrier, “Bayes’s Theorem for Beginners,” in Sources of the Jesus Tradition, pp. 104-5
ollowing a recent debate in which I defended the Q Document hypothesis (abbreviated, Q) by citing the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (abbreviated, GTh)[1] as possible evidence which strengthens, if not confirms, the Q hypothesis[2] I seemingly ruffled a few Evangelical Christian feathers, although I don’t see why it would.
During my argumentation regarding both Q and GTh with a Christian apologist, who in orthodox fashion denies both the veracity of the Q hypothesis and the relevancy of the Gospel of Thomas, he wrote a rebuttal to the information I provided. This is my response to his article “Doubting the Gospel of Thomas.”
In this article, I will be offering commentary to his comments, taking issue with the points he raises, as well as with the poorly sourced arguments he attempts. Then I will offer a proper defense for the integrity of the GTh as being on par with the Synoptic Gospel tradition as an early first century source, and as an independent source for additional insights into early Christianity and the teachings of Jesus.
While involved in internet argumentation in another forum over the weekend, the subject of the so-called "Gospel of Thomas" came up. Usually such canards as this are propagated by skeptics and unbelievers in a vain attempt to discredit Holy Scripture in sort of an "Ah-hah, Gotcha!" moment by suggesting that other written gospels exist that are in some way comparable to the widely accepted Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
[Advocatus Atheist: Perhaps I should fill the reader in on the main discussion we were having; it was primarily on the canonization of scripture. I merely suggested that due to the fact that The Gospel of Thomas is at least as old as the Synoptic tradition, perhaps earlier (as we’ll discuss below), then Christians need to account for the similarity in over half of the 114 of the sayings of Jesus which Thomas shares with the Gospels and Johannine sayings.
Originally, when I first mentioned the GTh it was in support of Q, since Q addresses the ‘synoptic problem’ and also seems to hint at GTh as a possible independent source which may add support for a historical Jesus tradition. I don’t quite see how using GTh (if truly an independent source pre-dating the Gospels) to establish that Jesus was a real historical figure, is in anyway a canard. In fact one would have to question the agenda of any Christian who’d deny the GTh as evidence which supports the claim that Jesus of the Bible may have actually been a real historical person—even as such a claim is on shaky ground.[3] Although the authenticity of the Jesus sayings of GTh may be in dispute, it should not go overlooked that so are the Jesus attributed sayings in all of the Gospels.[4] So the debate cannot simply be about the authenticity of the sayings, as any decent historian would remind us.
Meanwhile, the statement that GTh is used as a means to discredit the Gospel, to me, is simply a nonsensical statement. What would it discredit exactly? Would it discredit the inherent truth found within or simply disprove the material as historically reliable? The only thing referring to the GTh could discredit about the Gospels is the fact that the Gospels were not divinely inspired (a difficult fact for the true believer) because of the incontestable sharing between them, or that the Gospels themselves may have borrowed heavily from other sources and traditions (which seems to be the case). Today’s Christians find such a notion heretical and are the first to dismiss it, yet this is what the evidence depicts, so to dismiss it off hand seems to be impetuous, not to mention such a display of blind faith suffers from a distinct lack of clear, thoughtful, objectivity.
Either way, to show that the Gospels simply cannot be relied upon to paint a historically accurate picture of past events doesn’t require referral to any extrabiblical text since they do a good job of discrediting themselves.[5] The irrefutable disagreement and conflict between pages of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is enough to send up red flags for anyone with a critical eye. Christians often deny Biblical errancy outright, but this devotional conviction flies in the face of good scholarly research and, at the same time, shows a confirmation bias which would not get them very far in the field of Biblical studies. In order to be as objective as possible the historian must put his prejudice aside when scrutinizing a text in order to avoid any confirmation bias which may impede his impartiality.
If one cannot do this, then their opinion is always going to match the institutions conventional opinion—even if it should be wholly inaccurate or altogether wrong. Devotional proclamations, such as the one above, should remain in Sunday school as they have no place in the field of historical biblical studies.]
The story usually goes that such writings were on the same par as the synoptic Gospels along with that of John, however due to some sort of "embarrassing information" contained in them, they were later suppressed in order to maintain the uniformity of the other gospel accounts.
[Advocatus Atheist: Clarification of what is intended by the colloquialism “on par” is needed. Support for what the author means by “embarrassing information” is needed.]
When Wayne Jackson of the Christian Courier was presented with the idea that the Gospel of Thomas was somehow "authentic" he had this to say about it...
"Authentic”? In what sense? Certainly not “authentic” in the sense that the “Gospel of Thomas” carries the same credibility as the canonical Gospel records Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There is considerable evidence that the document that is called the “Gospel of Thomas” was not authored by the apostle who bore that name.
[Advocatus Atheist: First of all, an online journalist for a Christian publication is not an unbiased or scholarly source and should not be cited for support. Secondly, Wayne Jackson points out the obvious by making the statement that the GTh was not authored by the apostle who bore the name. What Jackson seems to forget, however, is that none of the Gospels were either! Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not authored by the apostles either. If Jackson is trying to discredit the GTh as an unreliable historical source for early Christian tradition, then he has set up an unfair double standard. It seems his criteria for historical trustworthiness is anything which conforms to Christian orthodoxy—anything else is deemed heretical—and so untrustworthy. It appears that Jackson’s opinion is anything found to be heretical cannot be considered historically reliable. This blunder alone rules out his opinion on what is and is not historically reliable. Instead, we must rely on the qualified historians to gain our insights into matters.]
What are the facts relative to this ancient text that has caused such a sensation in recent years?"
Compiled in the Second Century
"In 1945, an archaeological excavation at Nag Hammadi in Central Egypt yielded a collection of 13 papyrus codices (books) totaling over 1,100 pages. One of these contained the “Gospel of Thomas” in the Coptic language. In this form it dates from about A.D. 350.
However, the original work apparently is older since three Greek papyri from the Oxyrhynchus collection (c. A.D. 150) contain fragments of the narrative. It is thus believed that the original “Gospel of Thomas” was compiled about A.D. 140, probably in Edessa, Syria. Some scholars push the date a little later (A.D. 150-200).
There is no evidence that this work existed in the first century, even though those associated with the bogus “Jesus Seminar” so allege."
[Advocatus Atheist: Jackson’s qualifications notwithstanding, most official historians agree that the GTh is at least a first century work, which later got added to, thus the Gospel of Thomas does contain later work shared with all four Gospels. Even so, Thomas is markedly a first century work. For starters, Stevan Davies, Stephen Patterson, John H. Morison, among others, all agree that Thomas is a legitimate first century work. How do we know this?
Mainly, the reason we can know this is because of the Oxyrhynchus find in Egypt (1897; 1903), in which three ancient Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas were unearthed. Although the textual source for the sayings was originally unclear, due to the deteriorated status of the 5,000 some fragments, the Nag Hammadi discovery in 1945—which discovered a complete version of Thomas in Coptic—made it possible to identify the three surviving papyri of the Oxyrhynchus fragments as an earlier Greek edition of the Gospel of Thomas.
Professor John Morison, of New Testament Studies at Harvard Divinity School, states, “So we cannot with certainty reconstruct what did the Gospel of Thomas look like around the year 100 or earlier. But it is very likely that it existed at that time, and that a good deal of the material that’s now in that manuscript was already in a Greek manuscript that dates back to the first century.”[6]
True enough, the Oxyrhynchus fragments of Thomas date to around 130 C.E., and is further qualified by the reconstruction work, and interlinear translations of the Greek, by Andrew Bernhard. I would like to remind the reader that 130 C.E. is the date of a completed Greek manuscript, whereas the Gospel of John, by comparison, is dated at around 170 C.E.]
Yes indeed Mr Jackson. And in support of this information, Dr. Craig Evans (PhD) of Acadia University, had this to say about the later dating of Thomas. When told that "John Dominic Crossan says that the current text emerged about 60 or 70 [A.D.], but that an earlier edition goes back as far as the 50's. If they're right, that means that Thomas has really early material. Are they wrong?" Dr. Evans replied...
"They're wrong for several reasons," he said.... Thomas has too much New Testament in it. Not only that, Thomas doesn't have any early pre-Synoptic material. Thomas has forms that reflect the later developments in Luke and Matthew... Matthew and Luke sometimes improve upon Mark's grammar and word choice. Mark is not real polished in Greek grammar and style, while Matthew and Luke are much more so. And in the Gospel of Thomas we find these more polished Matthew and Luke forms of the sayings of Jesus. So Thomas isn’t referring to earlier Mark, but to the later Matthew and Luke. We also find references to the special material that's found only in Matthew and only in Luke, both of which scholars think is later, not earlier.
And Thomas has material from the Gospel of John. How can Thomas be written in the 50's and 60's but still have Johannine material that doesn't get written down till the 90's?"
[Advocatus Atheist: The consensus in American scholarship, I think you’ll find, is that the GTh is a text independent of the synoptics and that it was compiled in the mid to late first century. Supporting this view are the biblical historians J.H. Sieber, C. Hedrick, R. Cameron, Bradley McLean, Lance Owens, Stevan L. Davies, and most notably Stephen Patterson. I can’t help but have the sneaking suspicion that Craig Evans’ easy dismissal of Thomas as a first century work, something the community of biblical scholars seem to agree upon, is perhaps somehow influenced by his devotional convictions and not dependent on any reliable support. Since the consensus is, in point of fact, in support of the early origins of GTh and holds that it was written in around, or even before, 70 C.E., it might behoove Evans to take a second look and re-examine the work of his colleagues and peers. Oddly enough, the fact that Thomas is independent, not relying on synoptic or pre-synoptic sources, actually supports the early dating of the material.[7] Evans has inadvertently contradicted himself!
Stephen Patterson argues persuasively that there are no good reasons to believe that any of the synoptic gospels served as a source for Thomas. Patterson observes:
While the cumulative nature of sayings collection understandably makes the Gospel of Thomas difficult to date with precision, several factors weigh in favor of a date well before the end of the first century: the way which Thomas appeals to the authority of particular prominent figures (Thomas, James) against the competing claims of others (Peter, Matthew); its genre, the sayings collections, which seems to have declined in importance after the emergence of the more biographical and dialogical forms near the end of the first century; and its primitive Christology, which seems to presuppose a theological climate more primitive even than the later sayings of the synoptic sayings gospel, Q. Together these factors suggest a date for Thomas in the vicinity of 70-80 C.E.[8]
Meanwhile, Dr. Lance Owens chimes in with further support, adding:
Reference to James as an authoritative figure in saying 12 of the Gospel of Thomas has caused difficulty for scholars attempting to date the Gospel’s composition to a period after the first century. The community of James, historical associated with Jerusalem, ceased to exist after the roman destruction of Palestine around 70 C.E. If the text of the Gospel of Thomas was produced subsequent to that date, or if the version we now possess underwent later redactions with intent of conforming the text to theological and sociological views of a period foreign to the earliest formative years of Christianity, then why was this authoritative reference to James retained in the twelfth logion? And if the saying indeed dates to the earliest decades of Christian tradition, what significance does reference to James hold for the interpretive readings of the Gospel?[9]
Indeed, there is no evidence of redaction in the GTh, and with certain key passages we have clues which strongly hint at Thomas being composed before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. as Morison, Patterson, and Owens have all observed. So Evans and Jackson are both clearly mistaken.
What about the Johannine sayings connection? This too has been explained, and Evans would know this if he actually looked into any of the historical research done on the Thomas tradition.[10] Dr. Alexander Mirkovic has focused on research establishing the sharing between Thomas and the later Johannine works, and has clarified the issue by stating, “The Gospel of Thomas was written about the same time as the canonical gospels, since it does not presuppose the developed Gnostic cosmogony we know from the Gnostic writings of the second century. It is a collection of saying like the Proverbs, Ben Sira, or the Wisdom of Solomon.”[11] ]
And this is just the beginning of the problems for Thomas. Mr. Jackson next brings up...
[Advocatus Atheist: Actually, we’ve come across no real problems thus far. Only apologists are stuck with a heap of irreconcilable problems on this issue of Thomas’s influence on the Gospels and of the authenticity of the Gospels themselves.]
Beware of “secret sayings”
“Thomas” consists of a collection of 114 “sayings of Jesus,” that are supposed to be a “secret” revelation the Lord gave to the apostle Thomas. That “secret” business itself ought to be a red flag!
Some of these sayings repeat the words of Christ from the canonical Gospel accounts. About 40 of them are entirely new. Most scholars believe that the “Gospel of Thomas” is significantly contaminated with the ancient heretical philosophy known as Gnosticism (Cameron, p. 539)."
[Advocatus Atheist: According to Jackson, the Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas is a Gnostic text. I don’t know if he’s trying to be funny or what, but I’m not amused. It is sort of like saying that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are Gospels. And how can a Gnostic text be “contaminated” with Gnosticism? Is that like a Gospel source being “contaminated” with Gospelism? He might as well state that he read the Gospels but found too much Christianity in it. Jackson is a funny guy—but he shouldn’t quit his day job (as a journalist for the Christian Courier) anytime soon—because as a historian he just doesn’t cut it.]
Dr. Evans describes the concept of salvation in Thomas thusly...
"Salvation is not perhaps exactly the way it is in the other Gnostic texts, but it's pretty close... It comes from self-knowledge, from understanding oneself authentically, and recognizing where one fits into the cosmos, as well as repudiating and not getting caught up with this world. So it's slightly Christian, slightly Old Testament, slightly Gnostic."
Anybody with even a passing familiarity with the New Testament knows that this is not the process of salvation described there.
[Advocatus Atheist: Both Evans and our Christian apologist are, surprisingly, correct. Gnosticism is clearly not mainstream Orthodox Christianity. This is the third time they’ve pointed out the banally obvious. Gnosticism stems from the root gnosis (Greek for knowledge). In theological writings gnosis is the higher knowledge of spiritual things, often with reference to claims to such knowledge made by Gnosticism. What Evans and other Christian apologists seem to overlook is the fact that the book of John is heavily influenced by Gnosticism too. Even Clement of Alexandria (2nd Century) remarked that John had composed a ‘spiritual gospel’. This observation coincides with when the Gospel of John was written (c.170 C.E.) at the same time as the rise in popularity of Gnosticism. And we already discussed the sharing between Thomas and Johannine sayings, so there is no surprise that many scholars classify John as a possible candidate for a Gnostic work. In fact the early Church fathers believed the fourth Gospel of John to be a piece of Gnostic blasphemy penned by Cerinthus. So instead of helping support their agenda, they have just shot themselves in the foot, but have put on a brave face so you wouldn’t know it.]
Next, Jackson moves on to...
Absurdities
"Occasionally, some very absurd language is put into the Lord’s mouth by means of this document. Here is an example:
Simon Peter said to them: “Let Mary (Magdalene) go out from among us, because women are not worthy of the Life.”
Jesus said: “See I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Saying 114, Funk, p. 532; see also Yamauchi, p. 186).
Does that even remotely resemble the dignified status that women are afforded in the New Testament?"
Could a skeptic cite a reference in any of the four Gospels that resembles this? Of course not! The whole thing is a sham.
[Advocatus Atheist: Understandably, it helps to have actually read Thomas before jumping to conclusions about the so-called “absurdity” of it. Jackson too has failed to comprehend the content of GTh, although I highly doubt he has read it in full, since he would have understood the meaning of the verse he quotes if he had. Since both our apologist friend and Jackson seem to be unfamiliar with Thomas, or Gnostic tradition for that matter, I’ll briefly clarify.
In GTh saying 22, in a response to a question Mary Magdalene has asked Jesus, he responds:
Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the (Father’s) domain.”]
This clears up the meaning behind the subsequent saying 114, and if Jackson had read Thomas in full he would have known this. In saying 22 Jesus is instructing the disciples to be like him, and when he instructs males and females to become one, he is giving his women followers the same authority as the males, by making them equal. Peter becomes irate at such a suggestion, and in the first line of saying 114 Peter says, “Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.”
Peters confrontation with Mary to attain authority in the early Christian movement is a recurrent theme found in the Gnostic texts, often times Peter objects to any women membership at all. For example, in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary Magdalene, chapter nine, verses 3-10, Peter is irate at the fact that Mary has recently had a vision of the deceased Jesus, who had spoken to her in a waking dream (just like Paul), supposedly giving her secret revelations along with entrusting Mary with the obligation to take over and lead his movement. Since Peter wants the power and authority to lead the movement, he chastises Mary, as he finds her an unfit (or rather undeserving) candidate for the life of a disciple; let alone the chosen disciple who will lead the movement.
3) Peter answered and spoke concerning these matters. 4) He questioned them about the Savior: Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?
5) Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?”
6) Levi answered and said to Peter, “Peter, you have always been hot tempered. 7) Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. 8) But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. 9) That is why He loved her more than us. Rather, let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.” 10) And when they heard this they began to go forth to proclaim and to preach.[12]
It is clear to me that in saying 114 of Thomas, Jesus is instructing his disciples, including the women, to put on the perfect Man, and be like him. Not exactly difficult exegesis to follow if you have any familiarity with the Gnostic texts, which we can assume our Christian apologists here do not, which makes it rather difficult for their criticism to be taken seriously. Even so, to answer the above question, yes the Gnostics and the sayings of Thomas in particular, do depict a dignified status of women. In fact, most scholars agree that the Gnostic tradition elevates women more than the NT does—after all, it gives women the same status and importance of the other disciples, as to Jesus himself, and what is more Jesus appoints Mary Magdalene as the new leader of the Christian movement![13] This we do not find in the Gospel accounts.]
Jackson goes on to state…
The “Gospel of Thomas”—An Apparent Fraud
R.K. Harrison has well noted that this apocryphal work “cannot in any sense be called a ‘fifth gospel’” (Blaiklock & Harrison, p. 450). It is readily apparent that the so-called Gospel of Thomas has no place in the inspired canon, and history has been correct in rejecting it – some modern “scholars” to the contrary notwithstanding.
There are, however, two important points to be made in this connection.
1. The dependence of the “Thomas” upon the canonical Gospel records clearly indicates that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were recognized as the authoritative sources of information regarding Jesus of Nazareth.
2. The fact that the narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were available to a writer in Syria, in the mid-second century A.D., is dramatic evidence of the widespread distribution of the sacred documents in the early years of Christian history.
[Advocatus Atheist: Granted Jackson is a journalist and not a historian of any sort, it appears he is not familiar with the history of the construction of the canon. I have discussed this topic in detail, and you may wish to view my essay “An Unassuming History: On the History of Alterations, Emendation, and Man-made Origins of the Canon,” HERE. And since the debate isn’t about including new material into the established canon I will leave this ineffectual reference alone for the time being.]
Let's back up for a minute. Dr. Evans gives us some background information concerning the "Syria" reference.
"If you read Thomas in Greek or Coptic, it looks like the sayings aren’t in any particular order. It appears to be just a random collection of of what Jesus supposedly said. But if you translate it into Syriac, something extremely interesting emerges. Suddenly, you discover more than 500 Syrian catchwords that link virtually all the 114 sayings in order to help people memorize the gospel. In other words, Saying 2 is followed by Saying 3 because Saying 2 refers to a certain word that's then contained in Saying 3. And Saying 3 contains a certain word that leads you into Saying 4. It was a memorization aid."
[Advocatus Atheist: The Syriac reference stems from the Coptic translation. Evans makes another big mistake in claiming that Thomas has no particular order in Greek or Coptic and then states the Syriac translation of the Coptic becomes ordered. Since this doesn’t apply to the Greek, like he claims, his point is moot. Such an understanding would simply be gained by studying the interlinear translations of Thomas by either Michael Grondin or Andrew Bernhard, both of whom include with it a critical analysis of the Greek text. It is no surprise that later versions would include memorization aids like this in the text—as it is true of most ancient texts also; e.g. the Iliad and Odyssey.]
Why is this significant? Dr. Evans explains...
"There was a guy named Tatian, a student of Justin Martyr, who created a written harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the year 175. It's called the Diatessaron which means, "through the four." What he did was blend all four Gospels together and present it in Syriac. So the first time Syrian-speaking Christians had access to the Gospels was not as separate Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but as the blended, harmonized form. In blending together the sayings of the four Gospels, Tatian created some new forms, because it was part Matthew, part Luke and so forth. Here's the clincher, those distinctive Syrian forms show up in the Gospel of Thomas."
Note: all occurrences of emphasis above appear in the text that is cited.
[Advocatus Atheist: As already pointed out—this is true of the Coptic version of Thomas, not the original Greek. So Evans has simply used the later version to try and discredit the early date of Thomas, but this is blatant subterfuge. We’ve already established that The Gospel of Thomas is a first century, independent, text. Although there is room for debate as to the exact date, it is clear that Evans is taking the minority opinion simply because it aligns with his Christian convictions. This confirmation bias detracts from his scholarship and makes his statements regarding Thomas unimportant.]
Ding-ding-ding-ding! And on it goes. The next time someone brings up this little hodgepodge of Gnosticism and absurdities and tries to present it as anything other than the complete theological disaster that it is, just hit them up with the FACTS. Anyone who would argue from positions advanced by the Jesus Seminar purposefully begins from a starting point that accepts their agenda which is driven by personal biases, not real evidence.
[Advocatus Atheist: Our apologist is right, on and on it goes, the merry-go-round of the apologist—avoiding having to look into the actual facts and instead siding with ‘Team-Groupthink’! And the closing comments about the Jesus Seminar was just out of place and incoherent—I don’t mean to be mean—but saying the Jesus Seminar is driven by personal biases and not real evidence is just stupid. The whole purpose of the Jesus Seminar is to establish the historicity of Jesus by detecting the real historical evidence which would aid in the search for the historical Jesus! Furthermore, the Jesus Seminar has nothing to do with the topic of this discussion, unless our apologist means to imply that some of the members are too liberal or do not believe in the divine Christ enough. But that’s a different topic, and many of the historians I quote are not part of the Jesus Seminar, so again, I fail to see the relevance behind bringing up the Jesus Seminar here.]
Work Cited: The interview with Dr. Evans is from The Case For The Real Jesus by Lee Strobel, (2007), Zondervan.
[Advocatus Atheist: Here we find the only scholar referenced is cited in a secondary source, written by an Evangelical Christian Apologist, known for his distortion of history to force it to fit with his Evangelical Christian convictions[14]—to which our Christian apologist seems to agree. Go-Team-Groupthink!
Not to sound too pedantic, but I think that it’s clear we have a problem with our apologist’s sources. First, neither source is scholarly. Of the two sources, however, there are select quotations from a single biblical scholar, Craig A. Evans, of Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, as cited in Lee Strobel’s book The Case for the Real Jesus. Second, Strobel’s book, a work of Christian apologetics, simply doesn’t count as a scholarly resource.
I normally wouldn’t be so harsh, but when it comes to being called out and told I’m wrong in a public forum, in an area I knowing a thing or two about, I don’t mind offering a hard hitting, well deserved, criticism. Of course, I know I’m probably not convincing any dyed-in-the-wool Christians, least of all any apologist who thinks Strobel is a suitable source when it comes to historical matters concerning Biblical history. Such a person has presumably already hopped on the Evangelical bandwagon, and will in all likelihood dismiss any of the real scholarship concerning the Gospel of Thomas or other Gnostic works which I may present, refusing to correct their misconceptions. For this reason, I have tried to cite only from primary resources, such as academic journals, scholarly articles, and related books which are written by professional scholars. Hopefully, in relaying this authoritative information, so as to be that much more credible, I will have corrected any false impressions there might have been about the historical information regarding the Gospel of Thomas. I guess it’s true what they say—the devil is in the details.]
Advocatus Atheist’s Notes and References
[1] Three authoritative versions of the Gospel of Thomas can be read online at The Gnostic Society Library:
[3] Most historians agree that Jesus must have been a real historical figure, but the fact of the matter is, there is just so little evidence to establish a link which would tie him to the fabric of history, all of which is polluted with mythological material, detectible redaction, and evangelical alteration that it is nigh impossible to uncover any genuine historical facts about Jesus. This doesn’t mean Jesus didn’t exist; simply that Jesus is more legend than historical fact. Meanwhile, any “authentic” evidence for a historical existence is strenuous at best. The simple fact is that Jesus’ life is so shrouded in mystery as to never have been adequately pieced together in over two thousand years, and we still don’t know anything about the life of the real historical Jesus, and not for a lack of trying I might add. For decades NT Biblical scholars such as Ferdinand Christian Baur, David Friedrich Strauss, and Rudolf Bultmann have convincingly argued that the NT is more diverse than Christians give it credit for and that any genuine historical information is nearly impossible to extract from it.
[4] Robert M. Price, Ph.D. “Messiah as Mishnah: The Problem of Jesus-Attributed Saying,” Approaches to Ancient Judaism New Series. Vol. 13(Scholars Press, 1998) Made available online courtesy of Robert M. Price at: http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/messiah.htm
[5] See: Bart D. Ehrman’s informative works: Jesus Interrupted, Misquoting Jesus, and Lost Christianities.
[6] Read biblical historian John Morison’s quote online at:
[7] See: Steven L. Davies, Ph.D. “The Christology and Protology of the Gospel of Thomas,” Journal of Biblical Literature Volume 111, Number 4, 1992. Available online courtesy of Steven Davies at:
[13] See: The Nag Hammadi Scriptures ed. by Marvin Meyer and Elaine Pagels; The Gnostic Gospel of Jesus by Marvin Meyer; The Gnostic Discoveries also by Meyer; Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing by Stephan A. Hoeller; The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle by Karen L. King; The Gnostic Bible ed. by Willis Barnstone with Marvin Meyer; Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity by Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King; The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels; Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels; The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson; The Gnostic Scriptures by Bentley Layton.
[14] Read Robert M. Prices book The Case Against the Case for Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel.
