Posted on 06/09/2008 1:01:02 PM PDT by Gamecock
When the National Geographic Society and a team of designated scholars announced the "discovery" and release of the document known as the "Gospel of Judas" the international media went after the story with a frenzy. Headlines around the world claimed that the discovery would force a complete reconstruction of Christianity.
As I explained then:
The resurgence of interest in Gnostic texts such as "The Gospel of Thomas" and "The Gospel of Judas" is driven by an effort, at least on the part of some figures, to argue that early Christianity had no essential theological core. Instead, scholars such as Elaine Pagels of Princeton University want to argue that, "These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion, and demonstrating how diverse--and fascinating--the early Christian movement really was." What Pagels and many other figures argue is that early Christianity was a cauldron of competing theologies, and that ideological and political factors explain why an "orthodox" tradition eventually won, suppressing all competing theologies. Accordingly, these same figures argue that today's Christians should be open to these variant teachings that had long been suppressed and hidden from view.
There were disturbing elements to the story, however. The National Geographic Society clearly aimed at making a financial gain through the much-publicized book and television documentary. More importantly, the Society did not make the actual manuscript available for other scholars to check and consult.
A devastating analysis of the actual translation put forth by the Society and its chosen scholars came from Professor April D. DeConick of Rice University. In her book, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says, DeConick proved that the most famous "finding" offered by the National Geographic Society translation (claiming that Judas was good and not evil) was a complete misrepresentation of the text and a profound mistranslation.
Now, in the current edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the scandal surrounding the "Gospel of Judas" is significantly expanded. The paper's account reads like a spy story.
From the article:
Marvin Meyer was eating breakfast when his cellphone buzzed. Meyer, a professor of religious studies at Chapman University, has a mostly gray beard and an athletic build left over from his basketball days. His friends call him "the Velvet Hammer" for his mild demeanor. He's a nice guy.
The voice on the other end belonged to a representative of the National Geographic Society. They were working on a project and wanted his help.
"That's very interesting," he remembers saying. "What do you have in mind?"
"We can't tell you," was the reply.
That was not the answer he expected.
"Let me see if I understand this," Meyer said. "You'd like me to agree to do a project with you, but you won't tell me what that project is. Is that right?"
"Exactly."
The paper performs a commendable service in providing an extensive analysis of the controversy surrounding the text and the project. Beyond doubt, there are major issues of scholarship and personal integrity at stake.
It is clear that the media were misled -- and that the media then mislead their audiences. Now, when the integrity of the entire project is called into doubt, the media are far less interested.
The Chronicle of Higher Education is to be commended, the National Geographic Society should be humiliated, and Christians should be reminded once again not to be shaken by media sensationalism. The discovery of the "Gospel of Judas" changes nothing except to add yet another manuscript to the pile of false gospels and Gnostic documents.
When those scholars misrepresented the "Gospel of Judas," they betrayed not only the public trust, but the truth.
Pagels has an agenda, and people will do all sorts of things to defend their agenda. But that is not something isolated only to Pagels. Some 15th century monk penned Comma Johanneum into the New Testament to make it more "trinitarian." The sad part about it is that we know it's a fraud but we still keep it in the New Testament!
I agree wholeheartedly. The NT is very clear that the Apostles were commissioned to do what others cannot do and that it is an imperative prt of the life in the Church to acknowledge the special role of the priesthood in dispensation of God's mysteria.
Sacraments are not ordinary "rituals," although their length and form is a human product based on the Holy Tradition. The life of an Orthodox/Cathllic Christian is the life of sacraments. We can not have our own private "catholic" faith.
That is absolutely correct, within the context of times and the position of the Church in the hostile world. The Apostles were convinced that the End Days were near and their priority was to spread the word of Christ as much as possible, urging people to sell their earthly possessions, and prepare themselves for the second coming.
The Church had to do some "damage control" at the end of the 1st century when it became apparent that this was unrealistic, even erroneous, thus producing pseudoepihraphical 2 Peter to redefine those expectations to prevent massive falling away.
>> It is a fable that every city had a presbyter. <<
Fable? The bible says that a presbyter was appointed in each city that was evangelized to: For this reason, I left Crete, that you should set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders (presbyters) in every city.
“Presbyter” isn’t the same word used for Jewish priests; presbyters preside over a rite. Without a presbyter, the worship rites could not be completed.
Now, I’ll grant you that the bishops were dispersed across 5,000 miles, from Spain to India, and there was very little communication possible, so faith traditions were evolving very independently. But this isn’t the sort of lack of structure Pagels is talking about. Within each city, the church was absolutely structured... and in a way many religions were not.
You’re right in that there was debate over various texts. Many communities lacked Revelations, 1-2-3 John, 1-2 Peter, James, Jude and Hebrews. The only “canon” of scripture consisted of those books deemed worthy of liturgical use, and these could include Clement, 3-4 Maccabees, Enoch, Jubilees, and the Shepherd of Hermas. Yet all of these “extra” books are from a completely different category than the sort of Gnostic books Pagels writes about. Her notion of Gnosticism as an alternative expression of Christianity is complete fiction.
>> To claim that the Church was delivered ready-to-use, fully assembled at Pentecost is as much of a stretch as the belief some Protestants spout about the Bible, like, manna, being sent down from the heavens, with numbered verses and full index in the back! It’s a fairytale that some would very much like everyone to believe.<<
It’s a straw man not relevant to this discussion.
2 Peter is pseudoepigraphical? So you’re saying that 2 Peter 1:1 is a false attestation? How about this whopper: “I think it is right, as long as I am in this body, to refresh your memory, since I know my death will come soon, as indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me.” (1:12-14) Or “This is now, beloved, my second letter I am writing to you.” (3:1) This isn’t like Plato’s dialogs, structuring the teachings of Socrates into fictionalized discourses, a method possibly used by John the Evangelist. Nor is it the failure to mention a scribe receiving dictation. You’re talking outright fabrication.
We must guard against reading into things. How many "cities" of that time are we talking about, and what qualified as a city. I submit major metropolis was a city. The rest were not. Also, in those days many Christians were hiding in Cappadocian caves, in order to remain invisible. There were also catacombs in Rome, an underground which was possible in large cities, but not in smaller ones.
Now, I’ll grant you that the bishops were dispersed across 5,000 miles, from Spain to India, and there was very little communication possible, so faith traditions were evolving very independently. But this isn’t the sort of lack of structure Pagels is talking about. Within each city, the church was absolutely structured... and in a way many religions were not
Yes, the Thomian Church in India is very synagogue-like (the curtain behind the altar actually contains the Torah!). So, one can only surmise that the early Church was an amalgam of many different traditions, all united in Christ's name celebrating the Last Supper and offering the bloodless Sacrifice as described in Didache. We have really no way of knowing how structured they were or even how "catholic" they were.
Yet all of these “extra” books are from a completely different category than the sort of Gnostic books Pagels writes about. Her notion of Gnosticism as an alternative expression of Christianity is complete fiction.
I think I made that clear in my previous post (#32) when I wrote "She is wrong when she asserts that Gnostics and Christians are two equal branches of true Christianity."
That is correct.
>> Some 15th century monk penned Comma Johanneum into the New Testament to make it more “trinitarian.” The sad part about it is that we know it’s a fraud but we still keep it in the New Testament! <<
The Comma Johanneum is cited as part of the Epistle’s text c. 350 AD. Even a century earlier, Cyprian seems to cite it. The reason for the doubt is that it isn’t cited by people who would seem likely to cite it (such as Clement, 2nd c.). It may actually have originally read, “there are three witness bearers, the Spirit and the water and the blood.” (Codex Sinaiticus, c. AD 330)
That, in fact, may be a trinitarian formulation, since the water is what bears witness to God the Father (representing justice, as exemplified in passages such as Noah’s, Joshua’s, John the Baptist’s), and the blood is from Christ. In which case, the gloss is theologically accurate, but abstracted enough to make it unappealing for Clement to base his argument on; Further, it’s not a fabrication, but an over-translation, consistent with the divine protection of the Holy Spirit preserving the inerrancy of the bible.
>> I submit major metropolis was a city. The rest were not. <<
That’s not reasonable, given the context. Paul and the apostles themselves did a pretty thorogh job of establishing churches in each major metropolis, and would have appointed presbyters themselves. The letter to Titus is Paul appointing a fairly minor character to do so. And such presbyters were needed sacramentally. We see from Acts 3 how deacons such as Phillip weren’t sufficient even to lay hands on converts. We can suppose that Paul is concerned that communities of believers are popping up where there is no presbyter to administer sacraments to them.
>> We have really no way of knowing how structured they were or even how “catholic” they were <<
No, as I concurred, there was probably massive variation among local traditions. But even so: the Thomian (I would have said Thomistic, but you’re trying not to refer to Acquinas? ;^D) churches give us a good hint.
Perzackly. And well stated, for a Greek! :o)
And by the way, I out-weirded you:
In a sense, you could say the very early Church was not well-defined, but was inherently definable and gradually self-defining.
The young Church was like a young child. She didn't have well-developed muscles, but developed them by use: weight-bearing, stress, exercise, and necessity develop muscles and (by analogy) develop the structures of the Church.
Similarly, like a young child, the early Church didn't instantly have a sophisticated immune system. Immune systems develop largely by exposure to foreign "invasion" of proteins and the formation of antibodies. The more a child is exposed to infectious agents --- assuming their fail to kill the child --- the more the child develops immunities.
Thus the Church did not unfold and explicate and refine her teachings until she was repeatedly challenged by heresies which demanded more and more detailed and explicit definitions of doctrine.
This does not imply that the Church Fathers "made it up as they went along." Rather, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, they unfolded and pondered and traced the implications of what they had already been given by the Hebrew Scriptures, by Jesus Christ, by the Apostles' preaching and letters.
This is how a simple infant Church grew up to become more discerning, more intellectually well-furnished, more organizationally elaborate, more just, loving, faithful, battle-scarred, wary, and tough.
(I know that most analogies don't run very far, but this one at least gets up on its hind legs and toddles, doesn't it?)
Well said, dangus.
Nor is it required that they be performed with or by a priest.
Stepping back from the purely academic we should all reflect on the relative level of organization and structure of the early church as compared to today. If in today's highly educated and connected world we can have this much disagreement over Church dogma and theology among relatively like minded conservatives, think how chaotic and absolutely unmanageable the early church would have been with all of the differences in demographics, language, history, culture, and tradition present at the time.
Any person, under emergency conditions, can be the minister of the Sacrament of Baptism. The bride and groom are the ministers of Matrimony (the priest or deacon serving as witnesses, not ministers, of the marriage sacrament.) And lay people can be "ministers" (suposedly under "extraordinary" circumstances!) of Holy Communion, but they cannot consecrate the bread and wine to confect the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ.
Only a priest can hear sacramental Confessions (Penance/Reconciliation), and can perform sacramental Anointing of the Sick and Dying; and bishops, only, have the canonical role of ministers of Confirmation and Holy Orders.
This is what the Catholic Church teaches, but by the plain meaning of your words, you apparently reject this teaching.
There's an old joke that the three leading religious denominations in the United States are all Catholic: post-Catholics, ex-Catholics, and anti-Catholics.
NL, in what sense do you consider yourself to be a Catholic?
Yes, the current law of the Roman Church states that ordinarily Catholics can receive the sacraments only from Catholic ministers (Code of Canon Law, Canon 844). However, the law itself gives some exceptions to this general rule. "Whenever necessity requires it or true spiritual advantage suggests it, and provided that danger of error or indifferentism is avoided, the Christian faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister are permitted to receive the sacraments of penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid" (Canon 844, 2).
As to your last question, only God can judge what kind of Catholic I am, but I will go to my judgment confident that I have done well by Him.
That, along with Pericope Adulterae [John 7:53-8:11] and Mark's verses 16:9-20 are but a few example sof how the "inerrant" Bible was altered by very fallible men.
God knew this would happen, which is why He left the Church to the Apostles and their successors to safeguard the orthodox and catholic faith and resist falling for latter-day additions and delitions and re-interpretation.
How many "cities" were there and which ones? Biblical numerology is not always trustworthy. I mean, we have 600,000 male Hebrews and their families (more than one million people) allegedly roaming the Sinai desert for 40 yearsand (most of which were spent in one single place) and not leaving a single archeological piece of evidence of their presence!
We don't really know for sure how many followers were there of the early Church. The data are simply not reliable.
One could equally well argue that there were just not enough converts to leave around as presbyters of local communties, given the 5,000 mile spread you mentioned earlier.
I believe Rome would have felt a lot more threatened by such a vast organization that denied caesar's divnity then historical facts show. In fact, one of the problems with 1 Peter being authored by Saint Peter is that it addresses the believers in scattering (probably refers to the Jews who left Palestine 500 years earlier) as there were no Asia Minor persections of Christians in Peter's lifetime.
But even so: the Thomian (I would have said Thomistic, but you’re trying not to refer to Acquinas? ;^D) churches give us a good hint
My fault. I knew soemthing was wrong with that adjective but couldn't think of the correct one. Anyway, shouldn't it be Thomastic? :)
I agree with everything you wrote, Mrs. Don-o. :) I couldn't have written it as well as you did. I am also not an apologist for Mrs. Pagels with whom I have even private correspondence of sharp disagreement. Her error is not that Christianity was a heterodox amalgam of various groups with uncertain Christology and theology, because the Church Fathers, even the Apostolic Fathers, already address their concerns with such groups. Manichaenism was a much more popular and widespread movement masquerading as "Christianity," so Elaine Pagels is absolutely right about that. She is wrong in that she clearly takes the Gnostic side and equates it as and equal but victimized side of orthodox Christianity.
The keys to the kingdom of heaven and forgiveness of sin were specifically left to the 11 disciples who received the HS separately from the rest on Pentecost. There is no doubt that Christ intended only his select 11 followers to carry on the authority in the Church and, by extension, by their chosen successors. Thus, any sacramental rituals are not only necessary but they are necessarily performed by those who have been called to serve.
think how chaotic and absolutely unmanageable the early church would have been with all of the differences in demographics, language, history, culture, and tradition present at the time
I don't have to. It was rather chaotic and diversified to put it mildly. The whole Church structure begins to crystallize at the end of the 2nd century, largely through the efforts of St. Irenaeus of Lyons. At this time, even the Gospels are actually credited to the Apostles, and the OT is brought back into the faith, having been largely neglected for almost a century.
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