Lost Gospels
Wonder at what is present!’— The Transmissions of the Apostle Matthias
Introduction
In December of 1945 two Muslim Egyptian farmers, Muhammad ‘Alí al-Sammán and his brother Khalífah ‘Alí, found over 1100 pages of ancient papyrus manuscripts buried by the east bluff of the upper Nile valley. The texts were translations from Greek originals into Coptic, the Hellenistic stage of the ancient Hamitic language of the Pharaohs (Gen 10:6). This dialect evolved after the invasion of Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and was subsequently replaced by Arabic as the Egyptian vernacular following the Muslim conquest of 640 AD. Coptic was thus the tongue of the primitive Egyptian Church, and remains its liturgical language unto the present day.
The site of this discovery, across the river from the modern
town of Nag Hammadi, was already famous as the location called in
antiquity CHNOBOSKEION
(‘Goose-Pasture’),
where in 320 AD Saint Pachomius founded the earliest Christian
monastery. Less than a half-century later in 367 AD, the local monks
copied some 45 diverse religious and philosophical writings—
including the Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Truth, as well as part
of Plato’s Republic (588A-589B)— into a dozen
leather-bound codices. This entire library was carefully sealed in
an urn and hidden nearby among the rocks, where it remained
undetected for almost 1600 years. These papyri, first seen by
scholars in March of 1946 (Jacques Schwarz & Charles Kuentz, Codex
II, in a Cairo antiquities shop), have since 1952 been preserved in
the Coptic Museum of Old Cairo. The earliest photographic edition of
the manuscript of the preeminently important Codex II was edited by
Dr Pahor Labib (Cairo: Government Antiquities Dept, 1956).
PapOx 1 Th 26-33 77 200 AD
PapOx 654 Th Prolog
1-7 250 AD
PapOx 655 Th 36-39 250 AD
The Gospel of Philip— as can be inferred from its entries 51 82 98 101 137— was composed at least in part after 70 AD by Philip called the Evangelist (not the Apostle), who appears in the Book of Acts at 6:1-6 8:4-40 21:8-14. There is no known previous reference to or citation of this complex scripture, which is an elegant series of reflections on the Abrahamic tradition, on Israel and the (incarnate) Messiah, whilst elaborating a metaphysic of Spiritual Idealism.
The Gospel of Truth was composed in about 150 AD by Valentine, the famous saint of Alexandria (born circa 100 AD). A continuous interwoven meditation on the Logos, it was scarcely mentioned in antiquity— and until the Nag Hammadi discovery not even a phrase from this noble composition was known to have survived. (A preliminary version of another extraordinary text from the Nag Hammadi library, which may also be by Valentine:
In the early years following the discovery of these documents, and before they could be given sufficiently careful scrutiny by scholars, it was commonplace for them collectively to be labeled ‘gnostic’ (see e.g. Grant & Freedman [1960], in Recent Scholarly Comments). This has always been a generic term for the Mediterranean mixture of essentially anti-sensory religious movements of the early centuries AD, and so was at first unfortunately considered a convenient category in which to place all of the diverse Nag Hammadi writings. Subsequent investigation has shown, however, that neither Thomas nor Philip nor the Gospel of Truth can correctly be labeled gnostic, as they each explicitly affirm the reality of our physical incarnations in their historic ambiance (including, most notably, the crucifixion): ‘Gnosticism’ — whether Oriental, Platonic, Mystery-Religion or Theosophical— by definition considers the perceptual universe (including our own incarnate lives as well as all human history, Biblical or otherwise) to be inherently illusory and hence malignant. The unequivocal Old Testament view, on the other hand— which Christ in the canonical Gospels most certainly accepted— was that the entire realm of the five senses is neither unreal nor evil, but rather divinely created and good: so, among countless examples, Gen 1:31 (‘everything that He had made ... was very good’) and Lk 24:39 (‘flesh and bones as ... I have’). The New Testament canons of the Western (Catholic/Protestant), Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian and Syrian/Nestorian Churches all differ significantly from one another— and even these were under dispute within the various branches of Christianity until many centuries AD; previously there were only widely diverse opinions recorded by various individuals well after the Apostolic era, regarding not only today's commonly accepted works but also such writings as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Gospel of the Hebrews (in which Christ calls the Sacred Spirit his Mother), the Traditions of Matthias, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Didakhê, and the Acts of Paul. Thus the Codex Sinaiticus of the mid-4th century includes both Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, while the Codex Alexandrinus of the early 5th century contains I and II Clement as well as the Psalms of Solomon. There was no church council regarding the NT canon until the Synod of Laodicea (363 AD), which indeed rejected John's Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. Twelve centuries later (!), the Western Canon was finally settled by the Council of Trent (1546 AD), which designated the present 27-book listing as an article of Roman Catholic faith (although episcopal councils have never claimed to be infallible; the vote at Trent was 24 to 15, with 16 abstentions)— and which the various Protestant Churches subsequently accepted. The sundry Eastern Churches have equally complicated records on establishing their respective NT canons: thus, the Armenian canon includes a Pauline III Corinthians; the Coptic NT contains I+II Clement; the Syrian/Nestorian Peshitta excludes II+III John, Jude, and Rev/Ap; the Ethiopian Bible adds books called the Sínodos, the Epistle of Peter to Clement, the Book of the Covenant, and the Didascalia; and John's Rev/Ap is still not included in the Greek Orthodox Bible! (see Biblio.35)Notably, however, the Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Truth were evidently not known to any of those traditions at the time of their attempts at establishing a NT canon, never being so much as mentioned in their protracted deliberations — and hence were never even under consideration for inclusion in their respective listings. In any case, the concept of a canon was certainly never intended to exclude the possible inspiration of any subsequent textual discoveries or isolated agrapha (Lk 1:1, Jn 21:25).
Precisely what transpired during the first 3½ centuries AD, prior to the earliest ecclesiastical attempts at canonization, is notoriously obscure, as the original Gospel Messianics were eventually supplanted by the Pauline ‘Christians’ (Ac 11:25-26). Thus the Epistle of Barnabas (late first century) remains unacquainted with the historical Gospels, whereas Justin Martyr (mid-second century) shows no awareness of Paul's writings— indicating an ongoing schism between the Petrine and the Pauline traditions. Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus of Lyon, at the end of the second century, are the first authors explicitly to quote from both the Gospels and from Paul. I have attempted to analyze the basis of this rift in ‘The Paul Paradox’, Comm.5, below. Essential reading on that formative period is Walter Bauer's pioneering study, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934; http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/humm/Resources/Bauer/).The translations of the texts themselves are both as literal and as lyrical as I could make them. Any grammatical irregularities encountered (e.g. the verb tenses in Th 109) are in the Coptic text itself. Plausible textual reconstructions are in [brackets], while editorial additions are in (parentheses). ‘[...]’ indicates places where it is not possible to interpolate the deterioration of the papyrus manuscript. The Greek Oxyrhynchus variants to Thomas are within {braces}. ‘You’ and its cognates are plural, ‘thou’ and its cognates represent the singular (but generally with the modern verb-form). Notes at the end of each logion are indicated by superscript¹, those at the end of the current text with a circle°. The scriptural cross-references listed are essential to an understanding of the saying in its biblical context, and the reader is urged to refer to them in every case; explicit parallels to Thomas in the Synoptics are separately marked with an equal sign=, to spare the reader looking up what is already well-known. In antiquity, of course, there were no lower-case letters, and thus in order to represent the Hebrew, Greek and Coptic scripts I have not here used their subsequent cursive letters but rather their classic forms, which are easier for the non-scholar to read. In turn, in translating such ancient texts to modern languages, it is virtually impossible to capitalize in a consistent and adequate manner; I ask the reader's indulgence in this regard. Thruout, ‘P...’ represents paragraph numbers in Plumley's Grammar, ‘C...’ are page numbers in Crum's Dictionary (Biblio.4+5).
In place of the Greek form, Jesus (IHSOUS), I have used the original Aramaic: Yeshua ((w#y), meaning ‘Yahweh Savior’, i.e. ‘He-Is Savior’ (Ph 20a). Hyphenated ‘I-Am’ represents the divine self-naming from Ex 3:14: Hebrew hyh) (ahyh), Greek EGW EIMI, Coptic anok pe (Th 13; P306). In searching out the sense of these new writings, I have had the benefit of extended conversations across the years with many friends and colleagues, especially Robert Schapiro, Christina Wesson, Crosby Brown, Luz García and Pedro Chamizo. My long-term thanks are also due to two of my undergraduate instructors: the poet Robert Frost, for his advice to partake only in what is worthy of one's time; and Prof William E. Kennick, for his example of the highest standards in philosophical theology. To Bertrand Russell, while I was studying in London and had the opportunity to demonstrate with him in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, I am indebted for his fearless example in confronting the Establishment— whether political, military or religious— for the sake of the truth. Much of the present edition was prepared while I was a guest of numerous universities both state and private, as well as seminaries and religious communities both Catholic and Protestant, throughout Latin America; and also of the faculties of philosophy, of orthodox theology and of informatics at the University of Athens— for their fraternal hospitality I am profoundly grateful. Internet technical advice has been kindly provided by Ioannis Georgiadis of the Athens University Computer Center. The canonical Gospels must be the paradigm in assessing any newly-discovered ‘Gospel’. That is to say, our criteria for evaluating such a text must be both its internal consistency with, and its external provenance relative to, the four texts which provide the ostensive definition of the very term ‘Gospel’ to begin with. So: are Thomas, Philip and Valentine theologically harmonious with the Synoptics and John? Do they all come from the same general historic context and archeological ambiance in antiquity? Are the new texts, upon analysis, both conceptually and empirically coherent with the four canonical Gospels? Do they, all in all, seem to be of the same Logos? Sufficiently careful scrutiny, I have concluded, yields an affirmative answer to all of these questions. Thus the intent of this present edition, together with the online Coptic texts, dictionary and grammar, is to provide the reader with the resources to carry out a thorough assessment of these extraordinary scriptures for him/herself.It has often been suggested that these new writings are basically concoctions produced by a series of unknown some bodies long after the events they purport to concern. However, the simplest explanation here (by William of Ockham's famous Principle of Economy: ‘Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily’) is not lengthy oral tradition followed by numerous written redactions; the simplest explanation is that these three scriptures were composed by the Apostle Thomas, Philip the Evangelist and Valentine of Alexandria, and come to us basically intact and well translated into Coptic from the original Aramaic, Hebrew or Greek. There is absolutely no reason to propose a more complex hypothesis here. And so, following the example of Aristotle's Metaphysics (thus afterward titled by Andronicus of Rhodes), I have called this collection of new scriptures ‘Metalogos’— that is, ‘More Logos’.
In sum, these new Gospels are surely the most marvelous discovery imaginable—
Paterson
Brown, BA (Amherst), PhD (London)
Loja, Ecuador; 1.VII.07
