Dr. James Emery White, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
The “wife” of Jesus tempest in a teacup has hopefully now
come and gone, but the damage has been done. Few reported the follow-up story
as leading scholars in ancient Coptic manuscripts declared it a modern forgery.
Missed the entire news cycle? Don’t worry; another ridiculous assertion will
surely appear around Christmas or, at the very least, Easter. Don’t forget about other ridiculous assertions like the
Shroud of Turin, or the co-inhabitance of man and dinosaur.
Ancient manuscripts seem to be the sweet spot, a la Dan
Brown and The Da Vinci Code (someone is having a hard time separating an author who writes
something for the sake of writing interesting fiction and someone who is trying
to sensationalize a bit of fact bombarded with fiction, like…let’s say the
Bible.), for sensationalism. Anything “old” that surfaces that even
hints at a variant account of the biblical materials is thrown into the news cycle
with breathless drama. Well, considering how much
bloody and deathly drama there is surrounding the Bible, it’s not surprise that
something that helps point out it ridiculousness will be met with drama also
If it suggests Jesus was less than single, or less than heterosexual, so much
the better. (We’re past discounting His miracles. That’s so 1960s.) It has nothing to do with the 60s, it has to do with the fact
that his miracles are silly and exploded. What evidence have you for the
raising of zombies? Or the possession of pigs, thrown off a cliff like
lemmings, or the turning of water into wine (please show me the evidence for
that one), or the saving of the world…he was nailed to a cross to save us from
our sins…but…I mean…so far as I can see, “Dr.” White, the world is still ridden
with murder and theft and the like (a good chunk done by religious authority).
So let’s be proactive and talk about ancient manuscripts in
light of the ones surely to come. It may not be sexy, but it’s absolutely
essential in light of the way the modern conversation continues to evolve.
Go back in time with me for a moment for a case study. (Jesus can help us travel through time now too)
A document that began to be circulated during the mid-second
century claimed to be the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. The
author wrote that Mary was loved by Jesus above all women, was a leader among
the apostles, and that Peter was threatened by her.
Another writing that surfaced at the time suggested that she
was the companion of Jesus, intimating a sexual relationship – perhaps even
marriage. Well, it’s clear that Jesus cared for
her and she for him else he would not have kept her around, so close, for so
long. She would not have cared so much to be there when he died and she would
not have been the very first person Jesus appeared to when he rose from the
dead. Sorry, but no wonder Peter was threatened. She was like the Yoko of the disciples:
misunderstood and Jesus’ favourite to be around. Oh, and there’s also that
thing about Jewish tradition that once turned 30 it’s customary for a man to
marry…and who should decide to start hanging around an awful lot? Who should
Jesus be defensive of? Yeah, I think there could be something in that
These writings have since been dated no earlier than the
middle of the second century – some even later than that – so they were removed
from the actual life and ministry of Christ, the apostles, and the formation of
the church by decades. Right, ok, and the Bible was
written during the life and times of Jesus Christ? Oh and during God’s freak
homicidal streak in the old testament as well? Give me a break. No one of these
writings were written during the time of any of the events of the bible.
They were also forgeries. Yes,
because we all know that when the bible was written and passed around and
discovered that it was necessarily truth. What a heaping load of bullshit. I always
wonder about the evidence for the bible…and no Christian has ever once produced
anything other than some silly nonsense about feeling it and knowing it. Well,
were you around when it was written? Did you speak to the over forty authors of
the book? Are you really sure it was divinely inspired? How can you be sure? These
are questions I really do really want to know the answers to.
That they surfaced during the second century is accurate;
that they were written by Mary is not. And the bible
was written by? This was no “lost” gospel, or “lost” book of the Bible.
It may have been new to us, but only because we did not find many of these
manuscripts until an archaeological dig began outside of Nag Hammadi in Egypt
in the 1940s.
The Gospel of Mary was also found in Egypt, but a few
years earlier. It actually showed up in a Cairo antiquities market in 1896, was
then purchased by a German scholar, and first published in 1955. We now have
two Greek fragments from the third century, and a Coptic manuscript from the
fifth century. And how many versions of the bible exist
today? Septuagint, Vulgate, Luther’s, King James’, RSV, NIV, NKJV, Youngs
Literal Translation, and many more, lesser forms of filth. So…variance is ok,
right? Scripture is subject o change? Ultimate, objective truths are open for
interpretation? Good argument Dr. White.
It is critical to note that people knew about this
manuscript when it first came out, and the Gospel of Mary, along with
such writings as the gospel of Thomas, was rejected as a false document. Skipping over the piss-poor grammar of that sentence, how
many people have now rejected the bible, and claim it to be nothing but a fantastic
fiction? I know a few. And it is
still rejected by the overwhelming majority of Christian
scholars today as a falsified Gnostic document forged to try and
challenge the growing Christian faith.
It’s important to know about the Gnostics; they were a group
that arose during the early Christian centuries that claimed secret knowledge
that would challenge orthodox Christianity. Yeah,
because Christians never thought to lay claim to some secret knowledge; never
held mass or services in languages the poor lay-people couldn’t understand as a
means to control them. Christians would never enslave people or think to
mislead people, right? Oh…wait… Decisively non-Christian, and decried by all
the church fathers as a heretical movement, the writings they claimed were
genuine never took hold. Instead, the ones able to shut
people up with the power of fear hammered home the point that the bible is
genuine, and those opposed to that notion will burn, or hang, or any manner of
other terrors inflicted on the apostates and non-believers throughout the ages.
And for good reason. Actually, for
no reason. Faith means to be devoid of reason.
What the Gnostics claimed went against everything the early
church stood for (Death, torture, rape, murder,
betrayal, extortion, etc), and what the witnesses to the early Christian
movement knew to be true. For example, the Gospel of Mary denies the
resurrection, argues against a second coming of Christ, and rejects the
suffering and death of Jesus as a path to eternal life. Well, that’s because apparently Mary, or whoever wrote her
lines, had the ability to reason out that people don’t come back from the dead
(when was the last time you saw a corpse walking about Dr. White?), let alone
twice, and obviously, having seen Jesus die, she would not expect that to make
room for a way to live forever…since you know…he died.
The manuscript even says that there is no such thing as
sin. Well, if there really is, and everyone who
sins is going to hell, then god is going to have his pick through the whole of Christianity
before he gets around to anyone else.
People at the time knew this was diametrically opposed to
what Jesus actually said, as they were present when He said it They were not! No one person who wrote anything for the bible
was actually around when Jesus lived, and those men who were, were just that,
men, who would have taken a chauvinistic view towards Mary having any matter of
opinion: her being equated to oxen and donkeys and the like. , so it was
never taken seriously. The fact that such a document surfaces again in our day
through archaeology does not mean we should give it credence it never deserved
to begin with. Just like the bible.
This is decisive to impress upon our thinking.
Let’s say that I wrote a book about the 2012 Super
Bowl.
But instead of writing that the New York Giants defeated the
New England Patriots by a score of 21-17, let’s imagine that I claim that my
beloved Carolina Panthers stormed their way to the big game and beat the
Patriots 34-3 (despite the rather embarrassing loss to the Giants this past
Thursday which I don’t want to talk about until the wound is less raw).
In my book I cite all kinds of statistics, play-by-play
analysis, and then self-publish it as an actual record of what took place.
What would happen? The Bible!
Would anybody buy it, unless as a joke book for a fan of the
Panthers? Would anybody actually believe it?
Hardly.
If intended to be a credible account of Super Bowl XLVI, it
would be laughed off the stands.
Why?
Because more than 100 million people watched the game in the
United States alone. Nearly 200 million worldwide. And
no number of people like that saw Jesus, nor could they have written or read
about Jesus because the vast majority of the people who would have seen Jesus
were poor and illiterate, fearful, and impressionable.
That is why the early gospels on the life and teaching and
ministry of Jesus, written by those who were eyewitnesses to his life and
teaching, took hold.
When the accounts written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
came out, as early as 25 to 50 years after the time of Christ (which some have
dated the Magdalen papyrus of Matthew at Oxford), people were still around who
knew whether what they purported to have happened did, or did not, actually
occur. The idea that any one of those men wrote a book
about the life of Jesus 50 years later is ludicrous. They would not have been
alive by that time. And even 25 years later…well, without any other ability to
recollect but with your head, write about your father and all of the cool
things he could do when you were a kid. I’m sure you’d discover that he didn’t
really pull a coin from your ear or any other nonsense. And only four people of
how many thousands of people saw Jesus work? Only four people say anything
about it? Come on now.
And they weren’t laughed out of the bookstores. They couldn’t be else they be killed. That’s the power of
indoctrination.
Not so with the Gnostic writings that came out decades
later. They were never suppressed, as some have suggested; they were ridiculed.
Simply because we uncover one or more of them today, such as we did in 1945,
doesn’t mean they held any weight when originally circulated. The bible only held weight by the sword, as said even in the
bible. Jesus did come with a sword. Can’t wait for the action figure!
That is why they were left out of the New Testament canon.
They didn’t belong there. Yeah,
truth is too much for something as appalling as the bible.
I once read an interview of film director Oliver Stone when
he was facing criticism for the distortions and factual errors in his films,
particularly the faux documentary expose on the Kennedy assassination JFK.
In a lecture at American University, he said that films
shouldn't be the end-all for what is true.
“[People] have a responsibility to read a book,” he said,
and then added that “[Nobody] is going to sit through a three-hour movie and
say, 'That's that.'"
Sadly, he’s wrong. That is exactly what countless numbers of
people do. Yes, they all, without actually reading
the bible and realizing how deplorable and silly it is, buy into what their
parents and pastors teach them. Never mind the research or the questioning, let’s
just buy into it. Take Stone’s advice Dr. White. Please?
And they do it for a three-day news cycle as well.
So the next time around, and there will be a “next
time around,” give the gospels the benefit of the doubt.
They deserve it. They deserve to be
praised for the fictional accomplishment that they are and decried for the un-measureable
amount of terror they have inflicted upon humanity since their creation by men
of men for men…and mostly against women.
James Emery White : A “doctor”
without reason.
