PROFESSOR CHRIS KEITHST MARY’S UNIVERSITY, TWICKENHAM

SOUTH BUCKINGHAMSHIRE PASTORAL AREA FAITH FORMATION

Jesus Outside and Inside the Gospels

The Canon and Jesus Tradition

“It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world and while the ‘pillar and ground’ of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life, it is fitting, therefore, that she [the Church] should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh. From this fact, it is evident that the Word, the Artificer of all, who sits upon the cherubim and who contains all things and was manifested to men, has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit.”

-Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3.11.8–9 (ca. 180 CE; translation from McDonald, Biblical Canon, 291)

The Agrapha

John 21.25 (NRSV):But there are also many other things

that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written

The Agrapha

Agrapha in New Testament TraditionIn the NT but outside the gospels

Acts 20.35 (NRSV): “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Familiar Variants in NT Manuscripts The Pericope Adulterae (John 7.53–8.11) The Angel Troubling the Water (John 5.3b–4) The Angel and the Agony (Luke 22.43–44)

The Agrapha

Agrapha in New Testament TraditionUnfamiliar Variants in NT Manuscripts

The Man Working on the Sabbath Codex Bezae (ca. 400 CE) between Luke 6.4 and 6.6 “On the same day, seeing one working on the Sabbath

day, Jesus said to him, ‘Man, if you know what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you do not know, you are accursed and a transgressor of the law.’”

Codex Bezae and Codex Beratinus (sixth century CE) after Matthew 20.28: “But seek to increase from that which is small, and to

become less from that which is greater.”

The Agrapha

“Jesus walked and stood on the bank of the Jordan river. And stretching out his right hand . . . And he sowed on the . . . and then . . . water . . . the . . . and . . . he brought forth . . . fruit . . .”

Papyrus Egerton 2, fragment 2, verses 5–15

“Jesus says, ‘The kingdom of the Father is like a man who wanted to kill a powerful one. He drew the sword in his house (and) stabbed it into the wall to test whether his hand would be strong (enough). Then he kills the powerful one.”

Gospel of Thomas 98

The Agrapha

“Be competent money changers.” E.g., Origen, Commentary on John 19.7.12; Homilies

2.51.1; 3.50.2;18.20.4 About seventy total citations in church fathers according

to one count (Vos)

“I am the true gate.” Hippolytus, Refutation 5.8.20

“No one can obtain the kingdoms of heaven who has not passed through temptation.”

Tertullian, On Baptism 20

Thallos (ca. 55 CE)

“In the third book of his histories, Thallos calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun, which seems to me to be wrong.” - Julius Africanus (ca. 160 – ca. 240), History of the

World, as quoted by Georgius Syncellus (ca. 300), Chronicle

Translation from Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the NT, 20.

Jesus the Executed Wise Man

Josephus (first century CE)Mara bar Serapion (post-74 CE)

Jesus the Executed Wise Man

Josephus (first century CE)Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 § 200Refers to James as “the brother of Jesus who was called

Christ” (Feldman, LCL)

Jesus the Executed Wise Man

Josephus (first century CE)Testimonium Flavianum; Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3 §

63–64“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call

him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah [Christos]. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared” (Feldman, LCL).

Jesus the Executed Wise Man

Mara bar Serapion (“Mara the son of Serapion”)“For what advantage did the Athenians gain by the murder of

Socrates, the recompense of which they received in famine and pestilence? Or the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, because in one hour their country was entirely covered with sand? Or the Jews by the death of their wise king, because from that same time their kingdom was taken away? For with justice did God make recompense on these three: for the Athenians died of famine; and the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea without remedy; and the Jews, desolate and driven from their own kingdom, are scattered through every country. Socrates is not dead, because of Plato; neither Pythagoras, because of the statue of Juno; nor the Wise King, because of the laws which he promulgated” (Cureton, Spicilegium, 73–74).

Jesus the (Foolish) Founder of (Foolish) Christians

Pliny the Younger (ca. 61 – ca. 113 CE)Epistle to Trajan, Ep. 96 (ca. 112 CE)“They also declared that the sum total of

their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately among themselves in honour of Christ as it to a god” (Radice, LCL).

Jesus the (Foolish) Founder of (Foolish) Christians

Suetonius (ca. 70–140 CE)Lives of the Caesars (ca. 120 CE)“Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at

the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome” (Claud. 25.4; Rolfe, LCL)

“After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he found a Jew named Aquila . . . who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome” (Acts 18.1–2)

Jesus the (Foolish) Founder of (Foolish) Christians

Tacitus (perhaps ca. 56–120 CE)Annals 15.44“Therefore, to scotch the rumour, Nero

substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate” (Jackson, LCL).

Jesus the (Foolish) Founder of (Foolish) Christians

Lucian of Samasota (late second century CE)The Passing of Peregrinus (shortly after 165 CE)“In a trice he made them all look like children; for

he was prophet, cult-leader, head of the synagogue, and everything, all by himself. He interpreted and explained some of their books and even composed many, and they revered him as a god, made use of him as a lawgiver, and set him down as a protector, next after that other, to be sure, whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world” (Peregr. 11; Harmon, LCL)

Jesus the (Foolish) Founder of (Foolish) Christians

The Alexamenos Graffito (first to third centuries CE)

Pre-ConstantinianFound in a guardroom on Palatine Hill

Jesus the (Foolish) Founder of (Foolish) Christians

“Alexamenos worships (his) God”

Jesus the Son of Pantera

Celsus (second century CE)Jesus “fabricated the story of his birth from a

virgin” and actually “came from a Jewish village and from a poor country woman who earned her living by spinning . . . who was driven out by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, as she was convicted of adultery” (Origen, Cels. 1.28; Chadwick)

“The mother of Jesus . . . had been convicted of adultery and had a child by a certain soldier named Pantera” (Origen, Cels. 1.32; Chadwick)

Jesus the Son of Pantera

Jesus ben Pantera in b. Sabb. 104bMedieval Toledot Yeshu

Jesus the Mischievous Little Boy

Infancy Gospel of Thomas (late-second century CE)

Infancy Gospel of James (late-second century CE)

The Gospel of Peter

P. Cairo 10759 (Akhmîm

fragment)